‘20-storey project to decongest Capitol building’

Thanks, but no thanks.

This was what Cebu Gov. Hilario Davide III said in response to the suggestion of former Capitol heritage consultant Jojo Eleazar Bersales to move the proposed 20-storey Cebu Provincial Resource Center outside the Capitol grounds.

In a press conference yesterday, Davide told reporters that transferring the 20-storey building somewhere else will only defeat the purpose for building it in the first place.

Davide said the Capitol wants to construct the 20-storey building to decongest the main building and other adjacent buildings by transferring some of the departments and offices.

Davide said that they have also started making plans to address the possibility of heavy traffic outside the Capitol grounds once

construction of the building will commence.

Davide said that the traffic plan will help make sure that vehicular movement on N. Escario St. remains smooth.

As to the suggestion of the National Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP) to redesign the new building, Davide said he is open to their recommendations.

For now, however, the governor said they will stick to the original design of the building and wait for the NHCP to respond to their newly submitted development plan.

Bersales, a former heritage consultant of former Cebu Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia, earlier urged Davide to transfer the proposed 20-storey building outside Metro Cebu.

Bersales said that transferring the building somewhere else can help promote development in other parts of the province and decongest traffic in uptown Cebu City.

Because of its height, he added that the proposed building could be considered an eyesore as it would loom over the Capitol building, which was declared a national historical landmark in 2008.

His pronouncement came after NHCP said that the project will “distort the balance and symmetry of the Capitol.”/

We decided to construct that building because we lack space here HILARIO DAVIDE III Governor, Cebu Province