SM as Baguio’s rallying point

BENCHWARMER

By Ramon Dacawi

BAGUIO CITY -- City councilor Joel Alangsab approached me after the city council session adjourned the other Monday afternoon. He said he heard I was “lawyering” for Shoemart in the giant mall’s determined earth-balling and replanting of alnus and pine trees much older than Christmas trees  to clear the way for its parking area expansion here.

                We both knew he was joking. He knows I’m not a lawyer. I guess he also heard me among those who spoke several Mondays earlier, against the SM plan of expanding its giant concrete That was when the city council turned its session into a public hearing. That was when SM vice president Bien Mateo presented the expansion design, after which city councilor ErdolfoBalajadia, chair of the committee on environment, allowed citizens to respond.

                Taking councilor Alangsab’s drift, I suggested he should file a  resolution expressing the city council’s gratitude to SM for its expansion plan that provided  a rallying point for the heightening of our sense of community and value for the environment. By “our”, I mean not Baguio residents, as the issue resonates beyond the city’s borders. It has affected many whose fond memories of their visits here were reawakened by SM’s expansion to maximize profitable use of its prime property on Luneta Hill.

                The reawakening - and resurgence – is as valuable as that sudden, miraculous shift of attention for football, in a country of midgets that had long fallen heads over heels for the tall man’s game of basketball. I’m personally in euphoria for football’s golden goal, thanks to the magic wand of the Azkals. Still, we pray their whose heads won’t expand too much over the instant attention and recognition they’re getting, which is incredibly phenomenal as they have yet to win an honest-to-goodness title. The Baguio Cinderellas, the real Askals (asongkalye)  or Pusakals (pusangkalye) had won numerous titles in over 20 years of glorious campaign, yet their feats failed to fire up support to football.

                That juxtaposition perhaps also provides the answer to why so-called environmentalists - and pining lovers of pine and of  Baguio -, be they self-proclaimed, instant or not, appear to be zeroing in on SM. There are other areas where more trees were recently cut or are threatened to be destroyed, yet nary a placard or a voice is being raised in protest. For better or for worse, these didn’t fire up environmental and community concern as much as SM’s plan did. SM is smack right on top of a hill that provides a dramatic view of the city’s business center of sprawling concrete. Its actions are far more obvious and visual than those of developers in other areas of this once city of pines.

                “Why only SM?,” the protesters under 182 Movement were asked. “Why only us protesting?, why don’t you?,” they ask back, according to BubutOlarte, a lawyer and folksinger with a heart, not only for patients but also for his native Baguio.

                For years, the trees on Luneta Hill stood like mute sentinels, antedating  what apparently is the most beautiful-looking SM mall ever  built, on unarguably the choicest site, a once pine tree-clad hill overlooking the only  Hill Station built by the American colonizers in the Philippines.  They are (or were)  what remains (or remained) of the pine forest and watershed from which water spilled and flowed for days when some of the trees were cut and the leveled area expanded to give way to the mall. Now, I believe the mall is a part of Baguio, not the other way around.  

                Still, as city mayor Mauricio Domogan pointed out in his weekly encounter with media last Wednesday, those concerned over the fate of the trees at SM should join the city’s concern over similar issues in other areas. He cited the on-going dumping of soil, apparently without permit, on Forbes Park along South Drive. Dumping is burying alive young pine trees he said. The mayor had earlier asked the city environment and parks management office and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources to investigate the earth-dumping inside the forest reservation.

                That’s why the mayor and the city council earlier stood pat on a city policy to preserve for posterity the mini-forest established beside the Baguio Convention Center. This valuable patch of green serves as a refreshing counterpoint to the urban sprawl that includes nearby SM. The patch was established almost instantly,  out of pine trees which were balled and replanted when they were young, just the size of Christmas trees. Although their growth has been stunted due to the shock of transfer, they survived because their roots were not as disturbed as the roots of the mature ones that SM has began to ball and transfer.

                SM had eyed to develop this mini-forest of balled pineinto a four-building, multi-story commercial and condominium compound, ironically dubbed “Baguio Air Residences”, under a joint venture with the Government Service Insurance System. The lot and the adjoining one were assigned by then President Marcos to the GSIS, for the system to build the Baguio Convention Center as site of the 1978 World Chess Championship Series between Anatoly Karpov and Viktor Korchnoi.

                For sure, Baguio’s air won’t improve should the mini-forest give way to “Baguio Air Residences”. That’s why children on their exploration of the landscape through the “Kids’ Urban Heritage Walk” wrote then President Arroyo to ask GSIS to forego its plan. That’s why Bishop CarlitoCenzon and his peers in he Commission for Baguio’s Centennial joined the kids in installing in the forest letters in tarpaulin thanking President Arroyo for telling GSIS to spare the rectangular patch of pine.

                The new GSIS leadership last year announced it will abandon the plan to develop the area in a commercial venture with SM. They, however, asserted  that the city should pay back GSIS its investment in acquiring the lot. The city did pay for the convention center that GSIS built, but GSIS may yet be convinced to gift the patch of pine as the lot was assigned to it just by the stroke of the Presidential pen.

                For now, the mini-forest is spared of SM’s expansion plans. A change in the leadership of GSIS, or of the national government, however, may spell change of view and policy over that patch of green.

For the trees fated for balling inside SM’s hill, my view is that the mall would eventually have to apply for a cutting permit covering the matured trees after these have dried up due to the shock  and dismemberment of their extended limbs. SM’s obedience to the law is impeccable and it would do everything to follow legal procedures, including its obtaining a cutting permit.

                With the rallying point, however, it will take sometime before the protesters, including Bishop Cenzon, will understand that SM’s sales pitch. It’s “We got it all for you”, not “We got it all from you”. (e-mail: mondaxbench@yahoo.com for comments).