WHENEVER people, Filipinos and foreigners alike, speak of the most beautifully master-planned development in the Philippines, the Bonifacio Global City immediately comes to mind. This city is walkable, safe, smart and complete with the infrastructure, business and commercial spaces and institutions that a family would enjoy. Even for people with disabilities (PWDs), the city was accessible. To prove this point when I was still BCDA president and CEO, I toured my Singaporean friend on a wheelchair from my former BCDA office to the Bonifacio High Street. I found all the ramps and safe paths and spaces that a person with disability would need to go around the city. Such safety and comfort in mobility is a luxury in most crowded Philippine cities because it would be rare to find tree-lined sidewalks and pedestrian lanes wide enough for a pedestrian to navigate all over our cities. Oftentimes, pedestrians would be forced to walk on the road itself because the sidewalks were nonexistent.
When BCDA decided to develop Fort Bonifacio to raise funds for the reconstruction and rehabilitation of the former Clark and Subic military bases which were devastated by the Mt. Pinatubo eruption, the plan met a lot of skeptics and naysayers. As part of the master plan for the bases conversion program led by former Dean Asteya Santiago of the UP School of Urban and Regional Planning, the plan was visionary and ambitious. Fortunately, BCDA was then led by the late Victor Lim assisted by then Rogelio “Babes” Singson, who eventually became our finest and best public works and highways secretary.
For Bonifacio Global City, credit must go to the audacity and vision of Mr. Manuel V. Pangilinan, otherwise known as MVP. When naysayers abound, it was MVP who put his full faith in the project with the biggest bid for it. With the biggest bid at P33,000 per square meter, in 1995, he won against all other competitors. From then on, he built the foundation for the city that we are all enjoying these days, albeit, there were some revisions to the original masterplan.
Dubbed as the biggest real estate deal of the century in the Philippines in 1995, MVP’s role in the Fort Bonifacio/BGC story was primarily that of the strategic sponsor and principal private-sector champion of the project through First Pacific and Metro Pacific Corp. He was not the architect who personally drew the master plan — this credit goes to Sean Chiao, who is now the Global CEO of Singapore’s Surbana Jurong — but it is without doubt that this project would not have come into fruition without MVP’s audacious business leadership and strategic vision.
Following the award to Metro Pacific, the private consortium and BCDA created Fort Bonifacio Development Corp. (FBDC), which became the joint venture partnership entity that developed the entire city. The joint venture structure gave the private consortium a 55-percent interest and BCDA 45 percent with MVP as the Chairman.
Under MVP’s leadersip, Metro Pacific’s consortium initiated the transformation of a former military reservation into a planned mixed-use business district. The early vision was to create a new urban center with residential, commercial, office, and recreational components that could complement and eventually rival Makati’s CBD. Today, Bonifacio Global City did not only rival Makati as the premier business district of the Philippines; it has overtaken it as the best place to work and live.
Having worked and lived in different cities around the world but deeply rooted in the Philippines, MVP directed the urban planners to adopt the best practices in the best cities of the world. When most real estate developers would rather build on all available spaces that a piece of land can hold, MVP made sure that there would be enough parks, open spaces, institutions, modern utilities and mobility infrastructure to uplift the lives and businesses of every one who would work, live and play in Fort Bonifacio.
As with any leader, the measure of great leadership is not in the times of abundance but in the period of adversity. MVP’s business acumen and resilience shone most brightly in the most difficult business decision he had to make in one of the world’s worst economic crises. As the Asian financial crisis of 1997 decimated and brought down many businesses to their heels all over the globe, the Fort Bonifacio development was not spared. Aggravated by the complexities of the delays in the permits caused by the inefficiencies in government bureaucracy, delays in the relocation of informal settlers who were mostly former military officers and personnel, the Asian financial crisis caused the peso to depreciate against the US dollar by 100 percent with the exchange rate going from P25 to the dollar to P50 to a dollar. Real estate development projects require time before the huge investments on land development return. Hence, a painful decision had to be made to let go, to steer the Metro Pacific group to safer harbor until the tempest of the crisis was over. Decisions such as this entail courage, grit and resilience. Once the Metro Pacific ship had weathered the storm, MVP led further in nation-building by growing PLDT/Smart, Meralco, Maynilad, Metro Pacific Tollways, TV5, Metro Pacific Health, Metro Pacific Agriventures and many other businesses that benefit all Filipinos in their daily lives.
We must always be grateful to MVP for building the foundation of the modern sustainable city-building that is now the Bonifacio Global City.
