ACTING Mayor Raymond Alvin Garcia is pushing for the establishment of a Creative District in Cebu City through a Public-Private Partnership.
“So, if we can invite all of these locators to come here and actually invest and locate here, then can you imagine the jobs that it might provide for our Cebuanos?” he said.
The Creative District, which will be patterned after the Cebu IT Park in Barangay Apas, is expected to generate thousands of jobs.
In his State of the City Address last July 3, 2024, Garcia said the City Government will exert efforts to establish a Creative District.
“The Creative District shall be a major economic driver for Cebu City, in the same way the IT Park was,” he said.
Garcia believes that the district will provide opportunities to Cebuanos who are looking for jobs in the creative sector, such as filmmaking, animation, digital arts and the like.
During a press conference last Monday, July 8, Garcia said the Creative District will rise on Block 27 in the vicinity of Robinson’s Galleria and SM City Cebu.
Employment generator
“What is important is we identified the district so that we know how to plan it out and how to give incentives to would-be locators,” he said.
He pointed out that the Cebu IT Park has several business processing management locators that employ 150,000 to 200,000 call center agents.
“You’ve seen how it has grown entirely over the years and, in fact, daghan kaayo tag naay mga kaila nga mga (we know a lot of) call center agents working there and how much employment it has generated for the City of Cebu,” he said.
Garcia said the Creative District will be very similar to the Cebu IT Park, but the businesses will be related to creativity, catering to Filipinos with promising talents.
“There are a lot of Filipinos who have very creative minds who are even working in these creative companies,” he said.
Aside from film production units, he said they also want to attract game developers.
While looking forward to the establishment of a Creative District, Garcia stood firm on preserving history.
“But we shall do this while continuing to preserve our history, heritage, identity and culture by also operationalizing what we have so far established with the passage of our ordinance establishing Cebu City’s heritage district and heritage district council,” he said. / JPS