(Artist’s perspective of the soon to be built five-story Angeles City Hall Annex in Barangay Pulung Maragul.)
ANGELES CITY- Amid criticisms that the city hall here is “one of the country’s ugliest,” Mayor Edgardo Pamintuan announced yesterday the construction starting in September of a P580-million new city hall and sports complex “fit for a highly urbanized city.”
This would be on top of a P320-million sports complex and socio-civic center near the Pampang market, the city’s biggest public market.
City Engineer Donato Dizon said Pamintuan’s plans “are in the pipeline to complement developments at the Clark Freeport Zone.”
“A five-floor modern and green city hall will be built in front of the existing government edifice. The building will feature parking lots and rentable commercial spaces for the first and second floors,” Dizon said.
He said the new building would house new offices for the mayor, vice mayor, members of the sangguniang panlungsod and other city government agencies.
Dizon added that the building would occupy 15,795 square meters and also feature an auditorium and a multipurpose function hall for bigger government events and activities.
“The old city hall is quite small and congested already. It also needs plenty of repairs. The new city hall will bring together all our offices and services to make our compound a compact walkable government complex,” Dizon said.
The current city hall, built by one of Pamintuan’s predecessors, has been described by local folk as “probably the ugliest city hall in the Philippines.”
Dizon said the P320-million sports complex and socio-civic center would accommodate 2,500 people in its convention center with complete sports amenities, multipurpose halls and parking areas.
“The mayor wants the facilities to be green and eco-friendly that is why we are infusing bigger windows as part of the initial designs for energy-saving lighting and ventilation. We can also go as far as making them solar powered but studies are still underway,” Dizon said.
The Angeles local government and the Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP) led by chairman Alberto Romulo recently entered into a loan agreement to fund the projects.
Pamintuan said construction is expected to start this September for completion in 600 days.
He said “this is on top of the P1.3-billion big ticket infrastructure projects for Angeles City, which are set to be implemented in 2019 under the DTI-DPWH Convergence program, the Roads Leveraging Linkages of Industry and Trade.”
