WITH the Mandaue City Council ratifying the City’s concession agreement with Millennium Pan Asia Hotel and Resort Inc. to develop a business hub in Mandaue’s North Reclamation Area, one sorry page in the history of that local government unit will finally be flipped. That business hub will rise inside the same compound where the rundown Cebu International Convention Center (CICC) sprawls.
The CICC, a joint project of the Mandaue City Government and the Cebu Provincial Capitol under then governor Gwen Garcia and built in time for the co-hosting by Cebu of the 12th Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) Summit, was hounded by corruption allegations during its construction. It stands on a 3.2-hectare property owned by Mandaue.
Compounding its woes, the old structure was damaged by the earthquake that hit Bohol and Cebu in 2013. The unused structure ended up becoming an instrument for politicking, with Garcia’s political rivals hanging a tarpaulin there to hit the former governor, who got sued with the Office of the Ombudsman-Visayas for the CICC’s allegedly anomalous construction.
From the ashes of the CICC will rise, according to Millennium, two hotels, serviced apartments, a casino, an indoor theme park, cinemas, a pool garden, shopping centers, offices and a convention center. The change would be so thorough there would no longer be any memory of the CICC and all that it represented.
On this, credit should be given to Mandaue City Mayor Luigi Quisumbing for pushing for the purchase by the City of the CICC so change could be effected. This after Gov. Hilario Davide III, who succeeded Garcia, refused to fund the repair of the structure so it can be made useful again.
The project, called Infinity City, has been projected to lure 360,000 tourists annually to Mandaue. “Soon, it will be the largest landmark of Cebu and the city’s biggest contribution to the ever growing tourism market and industry in Cebu,” Mandaue City Vice Mayor Carlo Pontico Fortuna said earlier.
From CICC to Infinity City. That sounds good enough.