By Modesto P. Sa-onoy
Since Megaworld came into the consciousness of Bacolod’s residents three years ago, the company has been creating a lot of expectations with its aggressive media and public relations campaigns that now the company and many of its promised state of the art approaches to community building has caused people to wonder what Bacolod will be like once all of these come to life.
I believe the metamorphosis will start in earnest once the three-level Upper East Mall opens at the planned schedule next year. The management promised that this will be “an architectural landmark, a first green mall”. What that means, people are asking considering that a “township” and a “green mall” are something Bacolod does not have.
Megaworld is currently constructing two townships with a total of 87 hectares. That’s a lot of ground that will be bigger that the “downtown” Bacolod that is circumscribed or bounded by San Sebastian, Lacson, Burgos and San Juan Streets.
According to Andrew Tan, the chairman and chief executive officer of Alliance Global Group, which handles Megaworld, their “vision is to be able to contribute to Bacolod’s booming tourism industry”. But more than tourism, Megaworld is reshaping the physical character of Bacolod. Once all its projects are in place, Megaword will change Bacolod’s skyline and lifestyles as well as its sense of self.
Let’s look at what is now going on at the most prominent places of Bacolod.
There is the 24.2 hectares of the Upper East Mall that comprised the former Bacolod-Murcia Milling Company. It is expected to be completed by next year. Its reported architectural design is a “blend of neo-classical and art deco architecture, reminiscent of New York City’s Upper East Side cityscape.” This is the first time that a company described the characteristic features of its project. As we were told when this project was started just about two years, it will have “a 48-meter high iconic clock tower that illuminates even at night, making it a major landmark along the six-lane main avenue of the township that stretches from Lopez Jaena Street to Circumferential Road.”
That will change the drab part of the city into a bustling area by day and night and will draw away the crowd from the inner city. Once that is illuminated as promised the inner city will be forced to lighten up lest it loses its constituency.
A “one-of-its-kind shopping mall” is planned to be built there. Now that is something people want to see – what makes it singularly different from the malls that we know?
Here also will be built “an iconic clock tower” that Megaworld said will be “another landmark in the city”. There were two iconic landmarks of Bacolod – the Bacolod plaza with its chessboard flooring and the San Sebastian Cathedral. Megaworld’s “clock tower” may end up like London’s Big Ben.
If the proposed Art Museum is built in Upper East, Megaworld shall have fulfilled the dreams of many artists in Bacolod. Sure, we have several art galleries, but a museum is a different means of raising a people’s sense of the good and the beautiful. That will raise our sense of being civilized a notch higher.
Then there is Megaworlds’ Northill Gateway along the Bacolod-Silay Airport road close to the City of Talisay. The Gateway introduces Megaworld’s Northill Town Center that the company says will be their first commercial development area for its Forbes Hill residential subdivision. There will be restaurants, cafes, pasalubong center. In effect, Northill will create another growth center that will transform that agricultural land of Bacolod into another boom area. We know what happened to the once dowdy area around the Bacolod City Government Center.
This will indeed become a crowd drawer considering the congestion and traffic snarls and lack of parking spaces in the inner city. Northill and the Upper East will give Bacolod a breathing space.
These developments will signal to the rest of the world that Bacolod is a place for investment and a good life. People look at Megaworld as a pioneering enterprise that sees the great potential of a place. Its various investments have proved well studied and successful thus these projects will become magnet for others to consider Bacolod as a place to be.
When that happens, Megaworld shall have contributed considerably in converting Bacolod into what its chairman Andrew Tan described, “a Dragon City.”
