Monday, November 03, 2008 Mercado: Mabalacat's Makati-Style Central Business District By Ram Mercado First Person
ANGELES City, Central Luzon's most progressive community, is now bursting in the seams. Its growing populace aggravated by heavy influx of migrant families and workers causes heavy overload on the city's land capacity, infrastructures, and its service institutions.
Like the Manila of old which had transferred its growth, opulence and development expansion to Makati, the municipality of Mabalacat will soon evolve as our own Makati.
The visionary town mayor has started the groundwork for Pampanga's "Makati" in-the-making.
Wanting to establish a lasting legacy to his extra long administration, Morales has, in fact, laid the cornerstone of this spectacular dream, soon to be reality.
Boking, along with his City Council and leading businessman, has set his eyes to the future, shaping his vision of development and unprecedented progress in the first stage: the entry of Globe Asiatique in the town as the powerful magnet for growth through investments.
A massive housing project of Globe Asiatique, Xevera has commenced building its housing units in Mabalacat North, the future address of the Makati-style Central Business District (CBD).
Sharing his vision for a future CBD in that area is Asiatique's top honcho, Delfin Lee, whose maiden performance in marvelous realty investment was the Xevera project in Bacolor.
Lee's big ticket investment in a former lahar community has transformed the area into a showcase of intrepid capital and bold initiative in a forlorn barangay (Calibutbut).
The project has changed the landscape of the former wasteland as well as fired up people's awareness to rebuild Bacolor town and restore its old glory.
Lee's pioneering project has caught the attention of Malacañang with the encouragement of President Arroyo, Rep. Dong Gonzales, Pampanga's most outstanding member of Congress, crafted, worked hard and campaigned vigorously to make his pet measure a reality. Gonzales is now known as the father of the Bacolor Bill.
Look at what one courageous move, like Delfin Lee's project, could create in government and among the people.
Mabalacat Xevera, comprising initial 6,000 dwelling units in an expensively-developed community, is expected to become the residential gateway to Clark. Upon completion, the community will absorb the housing requirement of the Clark economic zone, parallel to the Morales's concept of CBD.
The Mabalacat North CBD will be located within a 3,000-hectare estate that encompasses prime land from the town's ten barangays, Mayor Boking said.
Xevera's housing appears to be principal strategy to ensure the speedy realization of the Business District. With Xevera's well-known track record of successful real estate development, the project's urban ambience and its total support to enhance quiet and happy living in a typical model Filipino home, would strengthen locators and investors in that area.
Cutting into a strategic location, the Subic-Clark Expressway will raise maximum migration and people's relocation to the area, Morales said.
The Bamban-Mabalacat bridge is also the transit infrastructure to hasten and harmonize business growth environment, as does the North Luzon Expressway which is the main artery from Metro Manila to Pampanga.
A commitment of support has been expressed by Mabalacat business leaders and several stakeholders at the Ecozone to strengthen and promote multi-lateral partnership with the municipality of Mabalacat for the development of the imminent Business District.
Morales who also have regular hours at the Town Hall Extension office at Clark has been keeping close contact with Clark investors whose friends abroad are potential partners with the Business District.
Boking has assumed a stationary point guard position inside the Freeport. He is ever-vigilant and eagle-eyed for the first opportunities that his town and his constituents can grasp in Clark's expansive growth.
It appears that his first dream for the conversion of his town into a city is subsumed by fast contravening events, which converge in a dynamic spirit to shape the CBD.
Mabalacat Xevera is the magnum force that will attract, primarily, the home renters from congested Angeles City and future homemakers in the Metro Clark Area, including the towns of Bamban and Capas (Tarlac).
Popular TV host Sonny Lopez who monitors the ongoing Xevera project from his program guests reported "enthusiastic response from home buyers, and growing patronage recorded by the housing applications.
Xevera's reputation in Bacolor has spread its goodwill and easy acceptability based on the actual pretty houses already occupied."
