Issues On Baguio : Camp John Hay (2)

THE only place in Baguio that has retained most of its pine trees and open space is Camp John Hay, the former Rest & Recreation (R & R) destination of the US Armed Forces.  At 5,000 feet above sea level, it is much cooler and has much less humidity than the lowlands. Baguio has a mild climate similar to the many states back home in America.

It is truly a blessing that then President Theodore Roosevelt signed an Executive Order on October 25, 1903 setting aside 695 hectares of land for a military reservation in Benguet province. Without Camp John Hay and the contiguous areas of the Baguio Country Club with its golf course, and the Teachers Camp, the country’s designated summer capital would never be the same.

Other than the major tourism attractions of the Burnham Park, Mines View Park and the Wright Park & Mansion, what really makes – or defines –Baguio is Camp John Hay. Unfortunately, the former American R &R station high up in the Cordilleras is no longer the same as what it used to be.

After its turnover by the US government to the Philippines in July 1991, Camp John Hay became open to Filipinos and the public at large. My family and I thoroughly enjoyed the pristine environment and the facilities of the former American facility. However, after the Philippine government awarded a 25-year lease in 1996 (renewable for 25 years) to the Fil-Estate company, it was never the same again.

The redevelopment of the 247 hectares of land inside the former American base by Fil-Estate’s Camp John Hay Development Corporation (CJH DevCor) can be best – or worst – described as elitist and “anti-Filipino.” The places that visitors and residents of Baguio used to go to are no longer accessible to or off-limits to the public.  Worse. some have been  demolished or just left to deteriorate.

The favorite place in Camp John Hay that Filipinos frequent is the elevated area with the view of the Cordillera mountains. This area used to house the former Officers Main Club of the US Armed Forces and the 19th Tee & Tee Bar where you could buy meals and refreshments with a view of the golf course. My family and I loved this area not only because of the food, but also of the lovely one kilometre promenade.

Today, this one-of-a-kind prime area of Camp John Hay is long gone. It is now occupied by the luxurious Manor and the Forest Lodge hotels of the Fil-Invest company under Mr. Robert “Bob” Sobrepeña, together with Executive Vice-President Alfonso “Boysie”Yniquez. They cannot entirely be blamed for the elitist redevelopment because the government allowed them to do so.

The only way you can enjoy walking around the same area is either to be booked at the ritzy Manor hotel or to eat at the high-end fine-dining restaurant. Per our visit last June this year, the landscaped park of the Manor is now poorly-maintained with some areas over-grown with grass and plants and awfully muddy.

Two weeks ago, my family and I visited the Forest Lodge beside the Manor Hotel.  It is most unfortunate that what was taken away from the Filipino people to enjoy has been turned into a parking lot for the hotel guests. This is such a grave injustice to us, Filipinos, who have been oppressed by our government through their sheer greed and/or incompetence!

The wrong that has been done can still and should be rectified by the next president of the Philippines since Pnoy Aquino’s administration is already a hopeless case. The parking lot of Forest Lodge together with the contiguous area at the back of the Manor Hotel can be REDEVELOPED as one integral part of a park open to the people. This can be done without adversely affecting the operations of the two luxury hotels.

What I would like to see is the redevelopment of Camp John Hay when the areas at the back of  Baguio Manor and Forest Lodge are RETURNED to the people for them to enjoy.
While the rectified redevelopment is being undertaken, the old road that goes up and leads to Scout Hill can also and should be made open to pedestrians. The Scout Hill area should be redeveloped to bring back the recreational facilities (there was the mini-golf and skating-rink before) and some food stalls and a restaurant across, which are gone now.

What has become of Scout Hill is that the old white cottages built by the Americans were demolished to give way to the exclusive luxury log cabins and townhouses. Unfortunately, they were not even properly planned and were built too close to each other, creating a high-density area characterized by the congestion of the structures.

What is perhaps even worse is that the Camp John Hay Development Corporation (CJH DevCor) has not bothered to fix the road going up to Scout Hill from the main road. The pavement of the road has severely deteriorated over the past five years and neither the CJH DevCor nor the BDA has done anything to improve it. It is in such pathetic state.

However, the CJH DevCor has asphalt overlayed the circular road where the CJH DevCor office is located. Nearby is the historic Bell House & Amphitheater named after Major General James Franklin Bell who was responsible for many, if not most, of the structures. The Bell House is, of course, of American architecture and furnishings where the American Governor-Generals and other top US officials stayed in Baguio.

One of the greatest sins committed  inside Camp John Hay is the closure of its main entrance gate  that before allowed visitors to just walk in with easy access and  enjoy its pristine environment:  the pine trees, plants and open space. You could roam around the areas near the golf course and enjoy the view of the greenery. These simple pleasures are all gone now with the closure of the main gate and the redevelopment of the golf course.

Instead of just walking to the former American recreational facility, you now have to commute by either taking a taxi via Loakan Road or by taking South Drive all the way down to Baguio Country Club. The closure of the main gate near the city (walking distance from SM Baguio) has made Camp John Hay no longer accessible to many Filipinos.

The other best part of Camp John Hay is the area where CJH DevCor built the Clubhouse for the golf course designed by the world-famous Jack Nicklaus together with the upscale Forest Cabins & Country Homes. However, this area is now off-limits to the public unless you are a member of the golf club or own one of the exclusive houses. It is truly sad to see the Filipino people deprived of the simple pleasure of enjoying just being in Camp John Hay.

Today, there is really not many places to go to and enjoy in the remaining wooded area in Baguio City. Near the entrance from Loakan Road is the Ayala Techno Hub with its building for the CONVERGIS call-center and the retail areas for restaurants. Ayala Land, Inc. (ALI) did little architecturally to make its structures blend with the  Baguio environment. They could have done more if they wanted to.

First, ALI used the ugly green-colored roofing! From the Green Valley Club, you can see this roofing eyesore of Ayala. They should have used more of the earth colors like the color of the brown trunk of the pine trees. And to think that Ayala prides itself in having the
Environment as one of the “Three Es” of its Corporate Social responsibility (CSR).

Second, the design of the buildings is just like the ones in Metro Manila, Metro Cebu or in the San-Fernando-Angeles area in Pampanga. There is hardly any attempt by Ayala to make the visitors appreciate the distinct environemt and architecture of the area they have developed.

A good lesson here is that the government must have the Development Guidelines that can include a Conceptual Development Plan (CDP) of the area. The winning bidder cannot be allowed to do whatever it wants just like what happened at Camp John Hay where both the BCDA and the CJH DevCor failed miserably.

Rick B. Ramos at rbrpilipinas@gmail.com

Rick B. Ramos

in Baguio, Camp John Hay, Featured, Places

Saturday, August 29, 2015

Issues On Baguio : Camp John Hay (2)

THE only place in Baguio that has retained most of its pine trees and open space is Camp John Hay, the former Rest & Recreation (R ...

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Issues on Baguio : DPWH projects to Camp John Hay (1)

IN a span of one year, I have written five articles on the issues concerning Baguio City and its environs. It started with the “Issues on Degradation of Baguio” (MT, 31 May 2014) to which former President Fidel V. Ramos (FVR) promptly responded to since he was mentioned in the said article. In our meeting, FVR clarified what happened during his term and this was discussed in a \subsequent article (MT, 14 June 2014).

I was in Baguio last week to take a short break and there seems to be no end to the saga of issues in the favourite summer capital of the Philippines. From the worsening traffic and air pollution to the suffocating congestion of what is supposed to be a mountain resort city high up in the Cordilleras.

Of course, what aggravates the situation in Baguio and the towns of La Trinidad, Itogon, Sablang and Tuba (BLIST) are the never-ending projects of the Department of Public Works & Highways (DPWH) that are apparently conceived in sin. These public infrastructure projects, as pointed out in the past articles, are not even needed and poorly- implemented by the DPWH and their dubious favoured contractors.

Residents of the BLIST area in Benguet province, as well as visitors to the country’s summer capital, can only shake their heads and wonder why DPWH indulge in such acts of insanity.

One thing for sure is that the present-day INSANITY of the DPWH projects would NEVER have happened under the administration of former President Ramos, who has a civil engineering degree from the US Military Academy in West Point, New York. He would have either lambasted and/or fired the incompetent DPWH Secretary Rogelio Singson.

Saga of DWPH insanity in Baguio

Let us begin with the Kennon Road that starts at Camp 1 in Tuba, Benguet and ends at Baguio City. In spite of the hundreds of millions of pesos spent by the DPWH in Benguet province that includes Baguio, the 33-km highland national highway has not been fully paved after five years of the Aquino Daang Matuwid.

You would expect that Camps 1, 2 and 3 in Tuba would been paved with asphalt as part of its regular maintenance program. However, they have NOT done it in the past five years. Instead of doing simple asphalt-overlay on the pavement, the DPWH under Secretary Singson prefers the more expensive and unnecessary “REBLOCKING” that leads to bigger project costs that benefit both the contractors and officials of DPWH.

What has been done is the shameless REBLOCKING starting at Camp 3 in Tuba, Benguet, instead of asphalt-overlay after doing minor repairs on the pavement. Secretary Singson and his Undersecretary Romeo Momo (in charge of Regional Operations) could not care less if their shameless projects caused traffic along Kennon Road. My family and I have been victims of the traffic standstill caused by the on-going construction of DPWH.

About a month ago, there was a landslide along Kennon Road (Camp 6) that was reported in the national newspapers. When we went up to Baguio last week, the repair work had not been finished in three weeks. Not even 50 percent completion! Yet this could have been done and over by now if repairs  had been done by a private sector contractor.

The WORST part is that neither the DPWH contractor nor the District Engineer put even just compacted sand and gravel on the lane where the cars would pass. Thus, with only the soil on earth, it became muddy and made the vehicles crawl to a speed of about 5 kms per hour or less. This caused the traffic jam along Kenon Road last week.

Just what kind of contractors do the DPWH have in the Cordillera Autonomous Region (CAR)? The DWPH contractor that did the  REBLOCKING adjacent to Baguio’s only flyover really did such a lousy job. After tearing down the concrete pavement and concreting it again, they covered a section with asphalt to hide the defective work. Even the repair work on the pavement at the flyover’s approach used asphalt instead concrete
In my column of April 12, I exposed the never-ending insanity of the DWPH  in the summer capital with its REBLOCKING projects. The DPWH demolished one lane of Quezon Hill Road 2 and one lane of Mallare Road on the left side. Looking at the remaining lane of Quezon Hill Road 2, it is obvious that what the DPWH demolished was a well-paved road with asphalt overlay on top of concrete.

Yet the favorite national government agency of PNoy would not do what it is supposed to do. For instance, Magsaysay Avenue should be WIDENED to efficiently connect Baguio City to La Trinidad and ease the traffic congestion. It should be a continuous four-lane highway with sidewalks on both sides for pedestrians.

However, after more than five years of the Aquino administration with billions of pesos spent on public works in Metro Baguio or the BLIST region, Magsaysay Ave. has not been completely widened until today. Yet DPWH is giving priority to REBLOCKING that exacerbates the traffic situation. It is truly amazing how DPWH cannot come up with a “Right Project,” despite  claiming to practice the “5 Rs.”

Likewise, instead of doing simple asphalt overlay along the Baguio – Bontoc Road in front of the Benguet State University (BSU), the DPWH prefers to do REBLOCKING! The DPWH has a project there worth P44,848,444.84 for the “Widening with Drainage & Reblocking on Poor & Bad Sections along the Baguio-Bontoc Rd.” although there are no known flooding issues in front of the BSU campus. Amazing !

Why can’t DPWH prioritize the widening along Magsaysay Ave.  so that it would become a continuous four-lane national highway linking Baguio and La Trinidad? Simple!

The P44.85 Million project was started on Feb. 13, 2015 and was supposed to be completed by August 13, 2015. I forgot to check on its status last week during our short visit. However, it is a short highway of only about one kilometer (less than 1.0 km at K0255 +380 – K0256 + 172). So why should it take six months to finish it?

DPWH is now installing new drainage along major roads in Baguio that are not needed like in Leonard Wood Road and others. They are not needed because the existing drainage systems are still functioning. But DPWH has demolished sidewalks and removed the existing concrete pipes (600 mm or 2.0 ft in diameter) only to replace them with a bigger diameter pipe (900 mm or 3.0 ft) that is not needed.

The topography of the Leonard Wood and other roads will make the rain-water flow down the slope of the roads and NOT to the sides of the roads where the new concrete pipes are  being installed. In short, the new drainage pipes will be lucky to catch 20 percent of the rainfall that will flow to the gutter and into the drainage grates of the curb.

It would be interesting to ask the DPWH for their scientific basis or justification.  For sure, the DPWH District Office and/or DPWH-CAR did not even undertake any forensic investigations to justify the INSANITY with their projects. “Forensic investigation” refers to the determination of the cause of the problem and the solution(s) address them. There was NO Problem to begin with!

Rick B. Ramos at rbrpilipinas@gmail.com

Rick B. Ramos

in Baguio, Camp John Hay, DPWH, Featured, Places

Friday, August 21, 2015

Issues on Baguio : DPWH projects to Camp John Hay (1)

IN a span of one year, I have written five articles on the issues concerning Baguio City and its environs. It started with the “Issues on ...

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Foreigners loving PH more

After Valentine’s Day yesterday, I would like to write on that elusive love of country called “Patriotism” that seems to have been lost among us, Filipinos, at least in the past decades from the 1980s to the present. This is a truly an intriguing subject to touch on in the midst of what is happening to our country today.

Over the past many years, I have been privileged to make friends with persons born in the Philippines of foreign parents in the 1930s and 1940s. Their parents were of different European ethnicities, such as Scottish, English, Czechoslovakian particularly Slovak, and of course, Spanish. What struck me is their love for the land of their birth in spite of not living here anymore and having settled in America or Europe.

Recently, I met Louis “ Lou” Kidwell Jurika through his first cousin, Peter Jurika Parsons. Lou was born in Manila after World War II of foreign parents who were both born in Zamboanga City in the 1910s. His paternal grandfather, Stefan Juirka, who migrated to America from present-day Slovakia, volunteered to fight in the American-Spanish War in the late 1890s as a patriotic naturalized-American.

However, instead of fighting in nearby Cuba, Stefan ended fighting against the Moros in Mindanao in the Philippines at the turn of the 20th century. After the war, Stefan went back, got married in Manila with his American bride and proceeded to Jolo for business. He later moved to Zamboanga where his children were born. His son, Thomas Jurika, later served in the US army and helped the starving Filipinos with food supplies in the liberation of Manila in 1945.

Thomas would marry his childhood sweetheart, Virginia Kidwell, who was also born in Zamboanga. Her father, Lee Kidwell, has a similar story as Stefan Jurika who also enlisted to fight in the American-Spanish War, but ended up in the Philippine Islands or “PI” as it was called then and even now to some extent by people in the US Mr. Kidwell later became known as the “Coconut King of Mindanao” with his vast coconut plantations.

What struck me with Lou’s love of the Philippines is that his home in the United States is “completely Filipinized,” as he calls it with three Amorsolo paintings in their dining room. One of the paintings is the portrait of his father, Thomas Jurika, who helped the starving Fernando Amorsolo during the liberation of Manila.

Our great national artist later asked Thomas if he could do a painting of him in gratitude for what the latter did for him and his family. After Warsaw in Poland. Manila was the second most devastated city during the second world war.

Lou has kindly invited me to visit Casa Jurika in Texas, which I look forward to. I can just imagine his house to be more Filipino than my sister’s house in New York and now in Florida, as well as my brother’s house in Sydney, Australia. We can only wish that

the 10 million Filipinos overseas can furnish and decorate their homes to remind them of their cultural heritage and Filipino identity.

In one of his visits to Manila, the immigration officer noticed that the passport of Louis K. Jurika stated this white guy in front of him was actually born in the Philippines. Rather curious, he was asked what he knows about the country of his birth. After reciting what he knew, his passport was stamped “Balikbayan!”

The astounded immigration officer asked Mr, Jurika to repeat to his colleagues what he just told him. So Lou recited the names of all the Presidents of the Philippines from Emilio Aguinaldo to the present with the corresponding provinces they came from. He also recited the names of the provinces of the Philippines from Abra to Zamboanga.

Roderick Hall, Manila Memories
Another fellow born in the Philippines of foreign parents is Roderick “Rod” McMicking Hall. Rod’s parents were of Scottish and Spanish ethnicity. His mother Consuelo is the sister of Joseph “ Joe” McMicking, the acknowledged brains behind the Ayala conglomerate and of course, the present-day Makati. She was born in Manila like his great Uncle Joe, who later served with the staff of General Douglas McArthur in WWII.

Roderick Hall is one of the four co-authors of the book Manila Memories, the stories of four young European boys in the Philippines during World War II. Through their narratives, they remember their lives in Manila before, during and after the Japanese Occupation. Sixty years after the world war, they looked back at their respective experiences through their book.

Rod and I share a common passion for history. He has donated more than 700 books on World War II to the Filipinas Heritage Library in 2010. This is a rich collection for us, Filipinos, to remember and learn the lessons of the last world war, which we hope to be the last at least in our lifetime. Rod sadly lost his loved ones in the said war.

What struck me about Rod in our exchange of emails over the years was his desire to acquire Philippine citizenship. This was some years back when he was already in his late 70s. While Filipinos are “dying” to obtain American, British, Canadian or Australian citizenship, Rod wants to become a Filipino citizen. Amazing!

Unfortunately, our Philippine government is so good in making things difficult for everyone, including those from the United Kingdom or United States who want to become Filipino citizens. I offered to help my friend when he told me the story of what the Philippine Embassy in London told him of his situation. However, it seems that he already had lost interest, which is understandable.

I will write more on other personalities in my future columns. It never ceases to amaze me how persons born in the Philippines of foreign parents seem to care more for our country and people than the Filipinos themselves. They still consider the Philippines their “homeland” even if they have settled abroad comfortably.

Rick B. Ramos at rbrpilipinas@gmail.com

Rick B. Ramos

in Featured, Places

Friday, February 14, 2014

Foreigners loving PH more

After Valentine’s Day yesterday, I would like to write on that elusive love of country called “Patriotism” that seems to have been lost am...

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