Intramuros to migrate utility cables underground

Intramuros is one of the biggest prides of Manila and the entire Philippines. Over the centuries, the Walled City has survived natural disasters, wars, and many other threats. Despite everything, it has preserved its Old World charm.

But modernity has found a way to inflitrate the walls of the historic district. Proof? Look up and count the unsightly cables overhead, attached to utility poles scattered all over Intramuros.

But it looks like the historic district is set to overcome this threat.

Intramuros Administration (IA) administrator Marco Antonio Luisito Sardillo III revealed that there is a plan to migrate the Walled City's utility cables underground, starting with those on Calle Aduana.
 
"After an exhaustive stocktake of previous development plans for Intramuros—and related literature—among the matters I identified as a priority for Intramuros' redevelopment is the migration of our Walled City's utilities to underground facilities," he said in an email to GMA News Online on Monday.

Sardillo added that underground cabling can do a lot of good in Intramuros for a number of reasons:

• Intramuros has narrow and irregular sidewalks, and some of these utility poles are right smack in the middle of these sidewalks, leaving very little space for pedestrians.
• Bringing these poles and cables underground keeps them away from those who may wish to steal power/electricity.
• Underground cabling makes the delivery of basic services such as power more resilient to disasters.
• Removing these unsightly poles and cables helps restore the atmosphere of this historic district.

 
The initial estimate for the rebilitation of Calle Aduana is at P120 million, which will cover not only migration of underground facilities but also repaving, repair, and tree plantings.

For this project, the IA worked with the Department of Tourism—specifically the Tourism Infrastructure and Enterprise Zone Authority (TIEZA), which approved funding for the project—the Manila Electric Company (Meralco), and other telecommunication and utility companies.

The IA has also reached out to Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) "in the hope of further institutionalizing this cooperation,"

The administration also discussed the matter with the establishments that will be affected by the project and said most of them are willing to cooperate.

The IA aims to complete the detailed plans of the rehabilitation of Calle Aduana in about two to three months. The project will then be bid out. The implementation phase may start in September or October this year, and rehabilitation could be completed by the first quarter of 2016 at the latest.

"Some of Meralco's engineers told us that this is the first time that it is being done. Comparing it, for example, to BGC [Bonifacio Global City]: that was a greenfield development. Intramuros, on the other hand, is a living and breathing, pre-existing 'city,'" Sardillo said.

Long-term redevelopment

Sardillo said that plans to migrate Intramuros' utility cables underground have been around since 1973. However, none of them pushed through, until TIEZA recently approved funding for the project and five others in mid-2014.

He added that the decision to pursue this project to improve Calle Aduana was made late August 2013 with the help of Tourism Secretary Ramon Jimenez Jr.

"This project is in furtherance of the Tourism Secretary's directive to focus, not just on the restoration of Intramuros, but on its long-term sustainable and irreversible redevelopment," the IA chief said.

There are two main axes in Intramuros: Calle Aduana and General Luna Street. Most of the current tourist traffic is presently concentrated along the length of General Luna Street, which passes Fort Santiago, Plaza Roma/Manila Cathedral, and San Agustin Church/Plaza San Luis/Casa Manila.

"The rehabilitation of Calle Aduana was meant to help expand human traffic to this other axis... Note that I say 'human traffic,' because we are also presently trying to pedestrianize Intramuros (or to, at least, make it more pedestrian/bicycle-friendly)... The rehabilitation project is meant to calm the traffic, given that it will result in a reduction of the existing car lanes," Sardillo explained.

Moreover, developing Calle Aduana is one of the ways to help land values in Intramuros rise. Sardillo said that based on a recently commissioned appraisal report, the land values in Intramuros are around lower than the land outside the walls. Escolta, for example, has a land value of around P130,000 per square meter, while Intramuros ranges anywhere from P40,000 to P60,000 per square meter.

"This rehabilitation project for Calle Aduana is just one of the six projects that we thank TIEZA for approving. These projects are concentrated along the same area, i.e. the northern section of Intramuros, to the left of Calle Aduana (where Fort Santiago is located). The reason why we clustered and concentrated these projects around the same area is to help the land values rise--that is to, again, help ensure long-term redevelopment and revitalization, and to incentivize private sector investments and better/more optimal economic use," Sardillo said. — BM, GMA News