CITY OF SAN FERNANDO—Architect and urban planner Felino Palafox Jr. Sunday expressed fears that his efforts to save 366 trees on the site of a Korean casino and hotel project at the Subic Bay Freeport might be for naught.

Palafox gave up the casino and hotel project, including a $1-million architectural designing fee, to protest the cutting of 366 trees.

Now he is claiming that an executive of the state-controlled Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA) had asked his firm for an 18-percent commission in exchange for the official getting them on the short list of bidders for a previous project updating the free port’s master development plan.

The SBMA executive, who was a member of the bids and awards committee, had relayed the demand to architect Chona Ponce last year, Palafox said. Ponce is an architect in his firm.

“It was the first time in my 36-year career and work in 32 countries that I encountered this. We refused it because it went against the core values of honesty and transparency of the firm and the code of ethics of Philippine architects,” Palafox told the Philippine Daily Inquirer in a telephone interview.

He said the attempts to collect money from his firm stopped after he informed Subic-Clark Alliance for Development Council chair Edgardo Pamintuan and Presidential Management Staff chief Secretary Cerge Remonde about the situation.

“They told me the President (Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo) became angry. She was said to have confronted Armand (Arreza, administrator of the SBMA) and said, ‘Did you know that Jun Palafox is the only Filipino in the top 500 architects in the world and this was done to him?’” Palafox said.

He said nothing of the sort happened when he worked on the World Bank-funded master plan for the SBMA and a similar plan for Clark Development Corp., another state-owned base conversion agency.

Consequently, Palafox’s company was disqualified from the project to update the free port’s master development plan.

Sought for comment on the graft attempt, SBMA’s Arreza said Palafox should prove his allegations.

Arreza said he was prepared to present the records on the reason Palafox was disqualified from the master development plan project.

A source claiming to be close to Palafox Sunday called the Inquirer to say the architect had been receiving death threats because of his campaign to save the trees.

PR campaign

The threats came from the “SBMA leadership,” the source said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss details with the media. “A [group] is funding a public relations campaign to discredit Jun (Palafox).”

Palafox confirmed to the Inquirer that he had received death threats.

Arreza, however, denied that he or other SBMA officials were behind the campaign to harm or discredit Palafox. He said the balling of the trees as well as the environmental impact study for the casino and hotel project were both under review.

“If architect Palafox will verify his facts, he will see that 90 percent of the trees are less than 80 centimeters in diameter and [therefore] are not centuries-old as he claims. Only seven trees are more than 80 cm wide,” Arreza said.

Meanwhile, officials overseeing the construction of the Korean casino and hotel resort said the project was suffering delays due to the allegations of irregularities made by Palafox.

‘Costing a lot’

“We still don’t know why this happened. But because of this, our project is now delayed and it is costing us a lot,” said Eric Park, manager of Grand Utopia Inc., which is building the $120-million Ocean 9 Casino and Resort Hotel inside the Subic Bay free port.

He said he was in the dark as to why Palafox had issued statements to the media about the project when “we don’t understand what the problem is.”

“It’s easy to move the trees. We didn’t say [we will] cut them down. From the beginning, all we wanted was to move the project forward in a legal way. They (Palafox Associates) suddenly pulled out and the project stopped. We are far behind schedule. It is hurting our investment,” Park told the Inquirer.

He said he was surprised when Palafox quit the project because “until the day Palafox talked to the media about cutting the trees, we thought they (Palafox and the Yamasaki group, an architectural firm tapped by Utopia) were working well together.”

Grand Utopia, Park said, had no deals with Palafox.

Grand Utopia obtained the services of Yamasaki for the basic design of the casino hotel and it was Yamasaki that tapped Palafox and Associates as its local partner, he said.