Baguio offers to buy tree park to stop its use for buildings

BAGUIO CITY—To spare a tree park here from developers, the city government has offered to buy the forested lot from the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS).

The one-hectare park lies next to the Baguio Convention Center, which the city government also bought from GSIS for P250 million.

Plans to build residential buildings in the park sparked a series of community protests in 2008.

The city’s formal tender was delivered to the GSIS office in Pasay City on July 13 but the city government asked media to keep details of its offer confidential.

Mayor Mauricio Domogan’s letter addressed to GSIS president Robert Vergara said the city government decided to buy the lot “to hearken to the people’s will.”

In 2008, church groups, teachers and students from the University of the Philippines Baguio and neighboring high schools marched to demand the preservation of the tree park.

The park serves as an urban forest buffer against pollution generated each day by heavy traffic in an area originally designated as a government center.

The park is surrounded by UP Baguio campus, the Supreme Court compound, the old Court of Appeals building and Luneta Hill, which hosts a mall that had partnered originally with GSIS to build medium-rise residential buildings there.

The project was shelved due to the protests and the city government’s enforcement of an ordinance, which classified the area as a park.

Civil suit

GSIS had filed a civil suit against the city government, claiming that its zoning law may supplant a presidential decree, which required the agency to build the convention center after it transferred to GSIS the lots carved out of the government center reservation and the UP compound.

The convention center hosted the 1978 World Chess Championship series between Russian grandmasters Anatoly Karpov and Victor Korchnoi.

The land transfer was intended “as additional contribution of the national government to the system’s retirement funds,” according to the decree issued by then President Ferdinand Marcos.

In the letter, Domogan said the city government manifested its intention to buy the property during the April 27 hearing of the GSIS civil case.

“We understand that GSIS has plans to convert this forested lot into something that would augment the GSIS retirement plans and its actuarial solvency. But the city government is well aware of the [public] clamor … to preserve this [forest].”

Domogan described the offer as “humble” but said it would be fair compensation given that the tree park would remain a forest and a park. Vincent Cabreza, Inquirer Northern Luzon