A comprehensive heritage master plan for Cebu

The recent fencing of the venerable old Fernandez Hermanos Building, popularly known as the Compañia Maritima Building, ought to bring into sharp focus the need for a comprehensive conservation master plan for the old colonial section of Cebu City, one that should have been done way back in the 1990s when it already started. (Iloilo already passed theirs nine years ago!)

The transfer of the rights over this building, constructed on reclaimed land some time around 1911 by the Fernandez brothers of Manila to serve as a hotel and shipping terminal/warehouse, to the Cebu Port Authority (CPA) and not to the local government is a direct and simple interpretation of the law: all foreshore lease agreements that were entered into by private entities for 99 years will revert to the national government or its entities once the lease expired. Had there been a conservation plan then, the city could have asserted its authority over this structure.

If the Maritima Building’s lease on reclaimed land expired in 2008 (assuming it was granted in 1909), then the national government reacquired it during the incumbency of Pres. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo who must have quickly passed it on to a national maritime agency, the area being well within the boundaries of the old Port of Cebu or to the CPA which now apparently holds official documents pertaining to its ownership. This explains why it suddenly and without warning fenced the heritage property.

Comes now the City of Cebu, under Mayor Michaael Rama who rightfully feels aghast and insulted at the brazen act going on at its back door, even as parking spaces continue to be a problem within that area. This is going on even as another equally venerable old structure, the Gotiaoco Building has been quietly and without fuss passed on by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) to the National Museum of the Philippines, who last week began negotiations with the local Chinese community for them to restore the building and manage it into a museum of Chinese heritage.

We are witnessing therefore two different scenarios unfolding in two adjacent buildings, both of which had important and significant contributions to the economic growth of Cebu. Both used to face the sea and had abutted wharfs where ships, from steamers to diesel-powered vessels, used to dock. It probably helped, morbid as it may be, that the earthquake of Feb. 6, 2012 damaged a large portion of the Gotiaoco, further discouraging the DENR from ever making money out of it and realizing that only a large body of donors, clearly Chinese merchants could restore the structure to livable or in this case museological conditions.

The situation, unfortunately, is quite different in the Maritima, whose edifice was constructed with so many columns that you can barely move around inside without facing any two or three of them as you walk even for a few paces. This helped the structure withstand the tremor of 2012 unlike the rear section of the Gotiaoco which now leans slightly east away from the main fabric of the building. And so I have a feeling that CPA is fencing this important prime property because it wants make money out of it. But how it shall do so depends on so many factors, including whatever plans the city has prepared for this district.

I had always envisioned the Maritima in my mind as the home of a maritime museum complete with a hotel and cafes beside it, complementing the future Chinese Heritage Museum at the Gotiaoco and another museum of colonial migration and administration (honoring Spanish and Americans) at the old Customs House—now the sadly abandoned Malacañang sa Sugbo, which the Presidential Management Staff in Malacañang refuses to give to the city as they would rather let rats and the elements run the building down.

All these three buildings, plus City Hall, Fort San Pedro, Plaza Independencia, Cebu Cathedral and its museum, the Basilica Minore del Sto. Niño, Magellan’s Cross, BPI Magallanes and its museum, Yutivo and Sons building and the old Prudential Bank building (now owned by BPI) constitute an important heritage precinct that requires a comprehensive conservation plan, akin to the one made in the 1990s by a group of young visionary architects led by Sheila Conejos and Joy Martinzes-Onozawa.

It is only through this plan that the City of Cebu can assert its right to dictate on what to do in this area, even with entities like CPA. This fencing would not have happened had the city prepared and adopted a comprehensive conservation plan and declared the old colonial quarter a heritage zone way back in the 1990s. This would have been the first step to restoring and revitalizing the entire area with the city in full control of any development within it.

Nothing is ever too late. The National Heritage Law is the city’s empowering document to assert its right over heritage structures within its jurisdiction. It begins by declaring all of these structures and protecting them. Who knows, before we mark the 500th anniversary of the Magellan expedition in 2021 the city shall have already joined George Town in Penang as a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization World Heritage Site. It is now incumbent upon Mayor Michael Rama, the first mayor of Cebu who has had actual hands-on experience in heritage work through his role in the establishment of the Cathedral Museum of Cebu to begin these steps.

Heritage advocates, let us rally to the cause!

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I wish to personally thank Mayen Angbetic-Tan, lifestyle editor of The Freeman, for graciously hosting the successful launching of “Canto Voice,” a book of short but extremely witty poems by the late Cornelio Faigao (available at University of San Carlos or USC Press and USC Museum for now) and “The Female Heart and Other Plays” by her daughter, Linda Faigao Hall. As head of USC Press, let me express my deep gratitude also to The Freeman for sponsoring the launch and to all the readers and performers who made the event an extremely delightful success. Many thanks too to Dr. Hope Yu, director of the Cebuano Studies Center for editing and shepherding “Canto Voice.”