Also posted on the author’s Facebook page in this link.
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It all likelihood it was probably a Freudian slip, but Joemol certainly whipped up a whirlwind of pushback in saying “we are studying the [SM] proposal, it’s not our job to study your objection.”
You should have listened to the whole sentence—he did say, towards the end, that in their study of the SM-Magalong market mallification plan, the City Council will consider ALL objections.
But even that brings no comfort to anyone, either.
The big enigma for the City Council is that the REAL objection of those of us who oppose the plan is NOT because the details in the lease contract are imperfect.
Our objection is against the lease ITSELF, because it will necessarily lead to the total demolition of the present city market.
If you lease the city market to SM, you will have to destroy the city market FOREVER. You will never be able to turn back the hands of time and restore everything the way they used to be. You cannot push toothpaste back into the tube.
A hundred years from now, we just want to be able to say, “Look at our City Market. If you walk through it, it’s like you stepped into a time machine and went back to Old World Baguio, and be able to experience and see Baguio the way the city looked like close to the time it was born.”
Of course we can develop the market AND preserve it at the same time. We will and we should. Vigan in Ilocos Sur preserved its Crisologo Avenue. Even new buildings that are outside its historical core make a deliberate effort to adapt their architecture to reflect the town’s Castillan heritage.
I cannot imagine Vigan ripping up their cobblestoned streets and blacktopping them, or demolishing even one of those Spanish-style houses in their town centre—let alone demolishing ALL OF THEM–to give way to a glitzy “modern” mall, or a neat supermarket where everything you buy has a barcode.
Someday, I really want to be able to say, “Session Road looks different now, so is Harrison Road, but—by God—this city public market of ours is the ONE thing we NEVER TOUCHED. Everything you see is a page from our history. Those red limestones on those walls and pillars? They’re older than me. They were set there in the 1900s…”
Come to think of it: the city market is probably the ONLY thing we can STILL preserve of Old World Baguio and you know why? Because it is PUBLIC. It is not private property.
All those old Baguio houses, historical and rare—along Leonard Wood Road, Gibraltar, Dominican Hill, Naguilian Road, City Camp, Asin Road, Ferguson—everyplace around the city: THEY’RE GONE.
They were all built on private titled properties. Their owners struggled to maintain those crumbling houses and therefore succumbed to the tempting offers of beguiling corporate developers that bought vast tracts of these Baguio residential lands for a song.
But the City Government of Baguio is no pauper. It is not struggling to make ends meet, as it were. It’s not struggling to pay any bills.
We’re the richest city north of Manila. If the thrifty Ilocano “kuripots” of Vigan can keep their Crisologo Avenue, why can’t we keep our City Market?
If the city market is gone, it pains me to have to explain a lot of things to my grandchildren.
“You mean there used to be an Old World Market UNDERNEATH this mall, Lolo?
“Yes, apo, but we lost it because our mayor and City Council at the time, they were just too tired to manage an old market, it’s been around since 1909 and it was crumbling, it was ugly, it was dirty, it was smelly…”
“I bet it was, Lolo, if it’s been around for more than a century like you said. It was an OLD market, what did you expect? Didn’t you try to fix it?”
“Well, it was going to cost a lot of money, and it was going to take a lot of work, we were all getting old, you know, it was…it was too much to do at the time.”
“You mean you didn’t even make a go at it? YOU DIDN’T EVEN TRY?”
“No—somebody offered us a lot of money and…it was too hard to resist. Here, I took a lot of pictures of that old market, you can have a look at these, nakkong…”
She might never look at those photographs, even if they were my lifetime’s body of work. My apo would probably cry her eyes out. I know she will hate me. She will hate our whole generation. Because we never gave her generation a sporting chance to have seen the old Baguio Market we saw.
I don’t hate SM, I really don’t. I wouldn’t mind letting SM build its second mall somewhere else.
I would jump for joy if they can direct SM to build its mall in that sprawling campus of the defunct Baguio Military Institute (BMI) out in Irisan Barangay, along Naguilian Road instead.
Or we can stop being in denial that Loakan airport will ever be a practically functioning airport. Why not just direct SM to build a new commercial cluster THERE to rival Bonifacio Global City?
Don’t cry a river for Loakan airport—the entire Makati business district was built on top of the old Nielson Airfield that closed in the 1940s.
That’s why Ayala Avenue and Paseo de Roxas cross each other in a quaint “X” pattern when viewed from the air. Those two wide streets used to be twin intersecting runways of Nielson airfield until its transfer to Nichols Field (Now Villamor Airbase) in 1948.
Loakan airport is a white elephant, so white it’a practically an albino.
Even flying domesticalLy, you have to check in at least two hours before boarding time in NAIA 3 if you book a flight to Baguio (when it was still possible, which it ISN’T anymore). Add to that the time to go through Manila traffic, takeoff delays, approach delays (if Loakan is fogbound), and the commute to town—flying to Baguio will entail at least four, five or probably more hours.
Why would you waste that much time in the air when you can now zip through NLEX, SCTEX and TPLEX and be in Baguio in three hours or less?
That’s the reason why PAL promptly discontinued its revived Baguio flights because it couldn’t generate enough passenger traffic to be viable.
So just tell SM to beat everyone to the punch and just build in Loakan—EPZA is there, Baguio’s industrial backbone is there and it’s the gateway to Itogon, Benguet’s hottest ecopark destination these days. They’ll be cozy neighbors with Mayor Benjie Magalong’s alma mater, PMA.
Forget the Baguio City market. Ma-vi-“Vietnam” lang ang SM dyan, it will just be forced to fight a very bad public relations war it can NEVER win.*
[TO BE CONTINUED]
Also posted on the author’s Facebook page in this link.
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