Forced Ayala Alabang gate opening highlights minefields for Tugade plan
If you want a preview of the uncivil war that is likely to be generated by the government’s plan to open gated subdivisions for traffic relief, just take a look at what has been roiling Ayala Alabang.
Instead of Transportation Secretary Arthur Tugade who is “persuading” the exclusive subdivisions to lift their barriers to pass-through traffic, it is ironically the Ayala Alabang Village Association itself that had pushed and forced the issue among the protesting residents.
In its desire to ease the traffic gridlock coming and going within the 700-hectare enclave, the village board, backed by barangay brawn, built and forced open a new gate connecting to Daang Hari last October.
Unlike the Tugade plan to open the gates to outsiders, the village board wanted the new gate, and another proposed side gate to Filinvest Alabang, just for the exclusive use of residents.
Even then, despite the apparent popularity of the proposal, the residents of the previously cul-de-sac Champaca and San Jose streets have managed to get the court, and developer Ayala Land, on their side.
Without going through the thickets of legal arguments, this is where the various cases now stand.
One, Ayala Land obtained an injunction in November after persuading Muntinlupa Regional Trial Court Judge Juanita Guerrero that it still owns the roads and parks of Ayala Alabang and that, crucially, it had never given its consent to the homeowners’ association and the barangay for their road-opening project.
Second, the affected residents sued their own village association before the Housing and Land Use Regulatory Board over the alleged illegal conduct of the referendum that approved the gate construction, among other issues.
Third, another group of oppositors filed a case against the barangay for allowing the construction of the two gates without first obtaining the requisite building permits. Even before Duterte marched into Malacañang, barangay chairman Ruben Daes apparently already went into a Digong-mode to push the construction and continued passage through the new Daang Hari-side gate.
The festering row has also caused formerly civil and even friendly neighbors to turn into bitter enemies.
One, Ted Zaragosa, even spent five nights at the Muntinlupa Hilton after a spontaneous combustion with then president Epifanio Joaquin of the Ayala Alabang Village Association. The current president, Antonio Laurel, is incidentally also pro-gate.
The division even extends among the public officials and Duterte supporters ensconced within the suburban sanctuary for multimillionaires, if the grapevine is to be believed.
Former president Fidel Ramos is said to be quietly supportive of the controversial project. Sen. Panfilo Lacson, who lives in San Jose Street where the second but still unopened gate to the Filinvest side is, is aghast at the prospect of his shuttered side street becoming the passageway for an estimated 3,000 village cars and SUVs from 5 a.m. to 11p.m.
Ditto with Brother Mike Velarde, actor Aga Muhlach and singer Martin Nievera.
The pressure to decongest the main Commerce Avenue linking Ayala Alabang with the Festival Mall side, and the opening of the San Jose gate, will gain momentum with the coming development of the long-vacant, two-hectare property adjoining the Filinvest side, another multi-billion venture of owner Madrigal clan.
Incidentally, the landed Madrigals provided the nucleus of Ayala Alabang when the subdivision was being planned in partnership with the Ayala Group as a hilly, wooded suburb of the factory zone lining up the new South Luzon Expressway five decades ago.
In 20/20 hindsight, one cannot build a 700-hectare cardependent subdivision in congested Metro Manila without providing for more gates. But who would have thought of that in the carabao pastures of Muntinlupa and Las Piñas in the 1970s?
As to Tugade, instead of going after the so-called lowhanging fruits to provide cheap solutions to traffic congestion like opening the subdivisions and mandating Ayala Avenue, McKinley and Buendia as one-way avenues as Singapore, Hong Kong or even New York do with their inner-city roads, the glib- talking Transport secretary is gingerly dancing around the issue. Still, his political sensitivity is correct. The last time a macho president took on the hacienderos and the mestizos of Makati, he ended up in the kangkungan instead.
Heard through the grapevine
And speaking of Ayala Alabang, it looks like the residents are not only shouldering the mounting legal expenses in the battle of the gates, but also the acceptance and other fees of its in-house counsel and director, Constantino Marcaida.
Citing conflict-of interest prohibition in the association bylaws, fellow resident and former Smart counsel Rogelio Quevedo has written the Ayala Alabang board asking Marcaida to return the nearly P3.4 million legal fees that Marcaida had collected.
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