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BY GLENDA SOLOGASTOA
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Saturday, March 25, 2017
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ILOILO City – Ilonggo senator Franklin Drilon is confident that growth and development in Iloilo will continue under the Duterte administration.
Drilon and British officials led the opening of the Great Britain Festival at a mall in Mandurriao district on Friday.
“I’m confident we can push this notwithstanding our differences with the administration,” Drilon said at the event’s lunch reception.
Renowned architect Paolo Alcazaren presented the Ilonggo senator’s flagship projects in Iloilo to United Kingdom Prime Minister’s Trade Envoy Richard Graham, Her Majesty’s Ambassador to the Philippines Asif Ahmad and the business sector.
His projects “have no political color,” Drilon stressed, citing the Iloilo Esplanade.
The Iloilo River development project “is in the General Appropriations Act,” he said.
“We hoped we would be able to move it forward, the mechanisms that would enable us to have these funds immediately released, and they have been released,” said the senator from this city.
MORE PROJECTS
Iloilo Esplanade started four years ago. Phases 1 and 2 have been completed.
Still ongoing, the project has until Phase 8 — covering a 15-kilometer stretch from Barangay Tabucan, Mandurriao, all the way to Muelle Loney Street, City Proper.
“If we put [them all] together … all these eight projected phases, it is larger than Rizal Park in Manila,” Alcazaren said, adding that the rest of the project may be completed within the next year or two.
More planned attractions will complement the Esplanade, Alcazaren said.
One of them is the improved Iloilo Capitol Complex with the renovated old provincial jail-turned-museum on Bonifacio Drive.
The Rotary Park will be brought back along with a new event space and new plaza.
The Sunburst Park behind the Iloilo Freedom Grandstand will redeveloped, too. It will be cleaned up and turned into an open space by transferring the Grandstand to another part of Muelle Loney.
Meanwhile funds have been allocated for the renovation of the façade of the Aduana, or the Customs House, Alcazaren said. “We [hope we] will see these in the next two years,” said the architect.
Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Inc. – Iloilo president Donna Rose Ratilla said the business sector is very thankful for the development of Iloilo and hopes this will continue.
Ratilla believes the Iloilo Esplanade and other similar infrastructures “will be a great help in investment and business.”
She also hopes the visit of British officials will open doors for more investments in Ilonggo business ventures./PN
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