TOP HOTEL The Manor at Camp John Hay is among the top hotels in Baguio City that attract tourists and business travelers for its strategic location inside the pine-covered former American rest and recreation center. —Robert Jaworski L. Abaño
BAGUIO CITY, Philippines — Negotiations are underway for the protection of workers running Camp John Hay businesses, which the Supreme Court wants to be turned over to the government, the lawyer of two major hotels in the leisure estate said here on Wednesday.
The backdoor talks began shortly after the high court in April reinstated an arbiter’s decision that requires Camp John Hay Development Corp. (CJHDevco) to vacate all of the properties it built inside 247 hectares of the former John Hay Air Station, said lawyer Federico Mandapat Jr., counsel for Camp John Hay Leisure Inc. which owns The Manor, The Forest Lodge and the CAP-John Hay Trade and Cultural Center.
READ: BCDA: John Hay takeover has begun
It was the condition set in 2015 by an arbitration tribunal of the Philippine Dispute Resolution Center that voided the developer’s 1996 lease agreement with the Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA) due to “mutual breaches.”
The BCDA, in turn, was required to pay back the P1.42-billion worth of investments of CJHDevco, a consortium owned by businessman Robert John Sobrepeña.
The high court issued its final judgment in October affirming the arbitral ruling and restoring the 2015 notices to vacate issued by a Baguio regional trial court to CJHDevco and all its affiliated businesses and luxury homes nine years ago.
Mandapat told the Inquirer that a new Baguio judge had been tasked with acting on the Supreme Court ruling “because those notices have already lapsed.”
But even before new eviction orders are released, the BCDA and CJHDevco have been working out “a smooth transition process that may require the government to absorb all of the employees and managers of John Hay businesses,” he said.
Mandapat estimates that about a thousand Camp John Hay workers may be affected by the takeover “and evicting them would disrupt business” inside the former American rest and recreation base.
TOURISM PLAYER The Forest Lodge, also at Camp John Hay, is one of the leading players in the tourism industry in Baguio, generating employment for locals. —Redjie Melvic Cawis/Contributor
Job security
Ramon Cabrera, general manager of CJH Leisure’s hotels, said 96 percent of the accommodation facilities had been booked throughout the Christmas holidays and until the first months of 2025.
The negotiations would also determine when the BCDA would release CJHDevco’s money stored in an escrow account and how the government could legally inherit the lease contracts of private individuals who have no ties with the developer.
Cabrera said 208 units at The Manor and 189 rooms of The Forest Lodge have “individual owners” under a time-share agreement that will lapse only in 2046.
These hotel room owners, occupants of luxury homes, and shareholders of Camp John Hay’s Golf Club were the subjects of a 2015 Court of Appeals petition for certiorari questioning their eviction notices, under the argument that these so-called “third parties” were not included in the arbitral decision.
But although the appeals court amended the arbitration ruling and recognized their individual rights, the Supreme Court this year said the conclusions of an arbitral proceeding could not be changed and ordered its enforcement.
CJHDevco is prepared to leave the 247-ha leased area “and all the properties it controls, such as Scout Hill and the fire station,” but do not include built-up facilities, Mandapat told local reporters.
He said most of the properties that the developer had put up had been “assigned” to independent companies that operate them, including CJH Leisure’s hotels, and the BCDA must deal with them individually.
But should the negotiations address all their concerns, CJH Leisure may follow the lead of Le Monet, the first Camp John Hay hotel to sign a fresh 25-year contract with the BCDA, Cabrera said.