Blue Wave-Marikina, also known as Blue Wave at Marquinton, is a mall and office complex in Marikina, Philippines developed by Federal Land, Inc. It sits on a site just off the Sumulong Highway, at the northwest corner of the intersection with Mayor Gil Fernando Avenue.[1]
The mall is a three-storey structure.[2] It is located near the Marquinton residences, a medium-rise planned residential community which primarily targets families, in Marikina.[2] [3] Despite that location, the mall itself targets a younger, upwardly-mobile customer segment, according to FedLand Brent Retail President Edward Tan. It features a four-screen cinema and a Robinsons Supermarket.[4]
The Blue Wave-Marikina IT Center is listed as an approved IT Center by the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA), making export-oriented companies located therein eligible for temporary tax holiday, permanent reduced rate of corporate income tax, and other incentives.[5] Tenants there include the NCO Group, who opened their fourth Philippine call center there in June 2009 with 650 employees.[6] [7] [8], it is the only FedLand project to have this status, and one of only two in Marikina (the other being Riverbanks Center).[5] However, PEZA also lists FedLand's Blue Wave-Metropolitan Park project in Pasay as an "economic zone being developed".[9]
Blue Wave-Marikina is a follow-on project building on the success of FedLand's earlier Blue Wave-Metropolitan Park strip mall project in Pasay.[10] It opened in August 2005, at a time when there was already a glut of retail space in Metro Manila and vacancy rates were expected to edge as high as 17%; nevertheless, it achieved nearly full occupancy by the month prior to its opening. It was the first new major retail development in Marikina in over a decade. It formed part of a trend at the time of building smaller district and neighbourhood "niche retail" centers, of around in floor area, in response to the overbuilding of larger shopping malls.[2]
In August 2008, an armed robbery occurred at the Metrobank branch on the mall's ground floor.[11] By a few days later, three of the five robbers had been caught. Police stated they were part of the Ampang-Colangco gang, which had committed a number of payroll, bank, and armor van robberies in Metro Manila.[12]