Uptown Cagayan de Oro: The City’s New Growth Engine

2026 Oct 3 | by Apple Barretto

Cagayan de Oro has long served as Northern Mindanao’s commercial, logistics, and educational hub, the point through which Region X’s trade and workforce move. That role isn’t disappearing. At the same time, development has increasingly extended beyond the traditional downtown core toward the elevated areas the city calls Uptown.

A City Growing Beyond Its Core

As Cagayan de Oro’s economic footprint widens, the highland plateau provides the contiguous space needed for large-scale residential, commercial, institutional, and recreational development.

The area has attracted a mix of government offices, private schools, residential communities, and other developments, creating a more diverse urban environment alongside the established city center.

Connectivity Changes the Equation

One piece of infrastructure has helped strengthen the area’s connection to the wider region. The CDO-Laguindingan Mountain Diversion Road, a four-lane national highway stretching more than 35 kilometers, provides an alternative route through the upland terrain of Opol, El Salvador, and Alubijid before linking Masterson Avenue and the Pueblo de Oro area with Laguindingan International Airport.

Travel time is the number that matters here. A trip that once took 60 to 90 minutes between the airport and the city center now runs about 30 to 35.

Executives flying into Laguindingan can reach Uptown’s offices and hotels without passing through the city’s more congested central roads, improving access to businesses and other economic hubs in the area.

Building the Foundations of a New District

Pueblo de Oro Development Corporation, the property arm of the ICCP Group, began developing the area in the mid-1990s, when much of the plateau was still undeveloped land. Its 400-hectare township served as the anchor development that established the plateau’s early residential and commercial grid.

The development includes a PEZA-registered business park with BPO, banking, and back-office tenants, a retail strip anchored by SM’s first mall in Northern Mindanao, and an 18-hole, par-72  championship golf course designed by Robert Trent Jones II bordering the residential subdivisions.

The township was developed around a 40-hectare urban rainforest that has been maintained as a protected ecological reserve, functioning as a natural drainage and green buffer during heavy weather.

Residential construction in the township has continued in phases since the 1990s, including the upscale Pueblo Golf Estates and, more recently, the Southridge Business Park. Together, these residential, commercial, institutional, and recreational components have contributed to the area’s evolution into a more integrated urban district.

The Next Chapter of Cagayan de Oro’s Growth

According to the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) Region X’s Northern Mindanao Regional Development Plan 2023–2028, Metro Cagayan de Oro is projected to become the country’s fourth metropolitan center, with Cagayan de Oro City’s economy valued at ₱220 billion in 2020 and its population projected to reach 828,274 by 2028.

As businesses and institutions consider locations beyond Metro Manila, secondary cities with established infrastructure and room for expansion are gaining greater relevance. Uptown’s elevation, mixed-use environment, and connection to Laguindingan International Airport position it to participate in this broader growth.

With decades of development behind it and improved connectivity to the airport and surrounding economic hubs, Uptown is becoming an increasingly important part of Cagayan de Oro’s next phase of growth.