NASH B. MAULANA
COTABATO CITY
April 28, 2023
The Al-Nor Commercial Complex here is expanding exponentially from its business nucleus of elegant hotel rooms, fine dining, franchised coffee shops, a convention center, native and oriental food places, and movie houses.
The couple owners are pushing through with a gargantuan expansion program, initially by the on-going construction of an eight-layer hotel building extending southwest of its current Two-Star hotel accommodation facilities.
In another site, the expansion potentially covers some 260 units of condominium-type apartments on an erstwhile Episcopal Church estate in 23-levels, northeast of the Al-Nor Complex’s exit gate from the city’s Robinson’s branch, along Sinsuat Avenue.
Owner Hadji Kahar Nul, a former overseas Filipino worker in Saudi Arabia, said an on-going expansion southwest of the complex’s entrance gate translates to 216 furnished hotel rooms which will be open for billeting reservations and accommodation by mid- 2023 in all the first six-floor levels. The extension stands on a 2,000 square-meter northeast adjacent area from its main one-hectare commercial complex.
Before 2024, all new 112 rooms will be fully furnished-open for business in two more levels up of the on-going construction, in addition to the current 164 hotel rooms that are often fully-booked to visiting tourists, mostly foreigners, professionals involved in peace programs.
With the current rate of P 11,000 – P 12,000.00 per square-meter of conservative development estimates, the construction can cost way above P 200 million for the hotel expansion with two levels of convention halls. But no, there could be a lot more to spend for materials, ocean freights and delivery costs, as the owners said they are importing the finishing construction materials, the marble tiles from Singapore and the veneer plane plywood sheets from another country.
Nul said creditor banks financing the construction that had been stalled by the past pandemic had offered financial reprieve to most clients in consideration of that unforeseen period that inevitably caused much delays, and which he and his wife as conjugal owners, had availed: But still they did not cease fulfilling loan repayment remittances. “That’s the secret of trust. Pay religiously even in times of severe crisis,” he told Manila Standard.
Nul’s Advice to Moros
Moros in general, Nul says, are fond of securing financial loans for “dead investments” like brand new vehicles. The more one gets used to putting risks on dead investment the least he is able to regain financial stability from losses, he confides.
But Moros, he says, should venture more of the bank trust loans into income generating, self-sustaining business that generates employments as well. The Al-Nor Commercial Complex in conjugal proprietorship has at least 1,200 personnel in its weekly and monthly payrolls from hotel personnel to franchised-shops employees and construction workers.Hadji Kahar Nul had been an OFW in his early professional life, with most of his employment period spent in Saudi Arabia where he ran an eatery for fellow Filipino workers. The usual local courses for goat meat, including papaitan, kaldereta, sinina, are often the meat preparation missed a lot in a foreign land, being in his menu.
PHILIPPINE MUSLIM TODAY 