BAGUIO CITY – Robinsons Land Corporation and SM Prime Holdings Inc., two of the country’s leading real estate development companies, formally tendered their offers to develop the city market.
City officials led by Mayor Benjamin Magalong and Faustino Olowan witnessed the presentations of the general plans done for Robinsons by Bambie Andal last Feb. 14 and by Vice Pesident for Legal Ryan San Juan for SM last Feb. 17.
The mayor said the offers received will be evaluated by the city’s Public-Private Partnership for the People (P4) selection committee subject to PPP rules.
He emphasized that the city intends to speed up the process without resorting to shortcuts in the established procedures to ensure that only the best offer will be selected at the shortest time possible.
He also reiterated that he will not tolerate bribery or ‘lagay’ system in the selection of project implementers.
According to the mayor, two more big companies have served their intention to present proposals in the coming days for the multi-billion project aimed to modernize the public market, supposedly the city’s show window.
The mayor said the city’s topmost consideration in the deal will be the interest of the existing vendors as he assured that the vendors’ cooperative will not be left out in the PPP joint venture whichever company will be chosen.
Recently a redevelopment plan was presented by the Technical Working Group headed by Coun. Mylen Yaranon, the architectural design of which was approved by the city council through Resolution No. 39-2020.
The said design was for a seven-storey structure including two underground floors to house the vendors with provisions for parking, sewage treatment plant, materials recovery facility and open space comprising 30 percent of the area for alleys and parks.
The city’s trading area should have been developed back in 1995 but the design-build-lease contract forged by the city government with the Uniwide Sales Realty And Resources Corporation was halted and held hostage for more than 20 years by lawsuits filed by opposing vendors’ groups.
Although the city and Uniwide won the cases, the project failed to take off due to Uniwide’s ensuing insolvency problems.** Aileen P. Refuerzo
