Tacloban reborn
Ifirst visited Tacloban in early 2014, a few months after it was hit by typhoon Yolanda. The city was in ruins and grieving the loss of many who were swept away by the deluge. I was part of a volunteer group of design professionals, one of many such alliances that sought to help the city and its people build back better. Our group returned a number of times that year.
I recently returned to the city and was amazed to see how much it had recovered from the disaster. Little evidence was visible of the damage three years before. I stayed at Rosvenil Pensione near downtown Tacloban. The pension house was one of the few accommodations that managed to open shortly after Yolanda. Rosvenil, like a few other lodgings in the city, evolved from an ancestral house, which now serves as the reception pavilion.
A similar heritage home turned hotel is Hotel Alejandro, located a few blocks away from Rosvenil. It boasts a mini-museum housing over 400 photographs mostly centered around 1945 and Liberation, when Tacloban served for a few months as the country’s capital.
I noted that there are more hotels in the city now, fueled no doubt by the influx of foreigners and out-of-town folk manning the relief missions. Noticeable too are the busy streets and increase in traffic since two years ago. More fast food outlets and malls have opened and schools apparently have recovered some of their enrolment.
I managed to tour the northeastern part of the city around the local and provincial civic complexes. I wanted to visit the large provincial plaza and the seaside park run by UP Visayas Tacloban (UPVT), which I had missed in previous trips.
From the hotel, it was a short walk to Tacloban’s City Hall complex, which is composed of post-war structures. The complex sits on top of Kanhuraw hill, overlooking Cancabato Bay. A large green oval serves as foreground, sloping down to the start of Magsaysay Boulevard and Balyuan Park whose main feature was an amphitheater whose roof was blown off in Yolanda.
The boulevard is a broad 1.5-kilometer waterside drive, which links the complex to UPVT, the provincial complex, and the Port of Tacbloban. Along most of the first half of the water side of the boulevard is another park, the UPVT Botanical Garden. I had collaborated with members of our volunteer group to make a proposal to integrate this with the City Hall oval, the Madonna of Japan garden beside it, and Balyuan Park. Obviously, our proposal has not seen full fruition.
Many of the proposals that I had glimpsed from other groups and local stakeholders seem to have met the same fate. Most of the area along the rest of the city’s main waterside that were blocked off as ‘no-build’ zones are now filled with informal settlers again. Despite the push to ‘build back better,’ and the apparent vibrant urban life, the city seems to be building back the same way. Of course, one understands that this state of affairs belies the complicated socio-political context of the city’s rehabilitation initiatives.
Moving up Magsaysay Boulevard, I reached the Ramon Magsaysay monument and the provincial capitol complex. Many towns and cities erected monuments to the fallen popular president after he perished in a plane crash. Tacloban’s ode to Magsaysay is of moderate size compared to others I’ve seen. Unfortunately the monument sits uncomfortably in the middle of a center island. A better setting for the monument could be provided by a small rotunda (the easement of the boulevard is wide enough).
The provincial capitol’s 1907 structure was damaged in the war but rebuilt along the same elegant neo-classic lines. The post-war renovation includes bas-reliefs of the beach landing of MacArthur, Osmeña, and other dignitaries on both sides of the main structure. I suspect additional embellishments were added during the martial law years, since Tacloban was a beneficiary of the regime’s largesse.
Fronting the capitol is the large (approximately one hectare) Plaza Libertad. Its main feature is a statue of Lady Liberty, hence the marketing blurb that the city has its own version of the Statue of Liberty.
Few buildings of note, other than the capitol building, help to define this plaza. The entry to the Port of Tacloban is on the end opposite the capitol building. Right next to this is the City Park and Playground, with rides and other themed attractions for the public.
My final stop on this short tour was a visit to the Leyte Park Hotel, another remnant of the martial law era. The hotel sits on the best location of the city’s waterfront. I suspect that this site was part of the original public open space the city had. It often happens that Philippine towns and cities lose much their open spaces to pressures of ”development.” The resort, completed in 1980, has seen better days. Its original modernist look has be subsequently renovated with incongruous touches of Mediterranean style architecture fashionable in the 1990s.
Tacloban has risen from the rubble of disaster. Like many other urban centers in the country, it is struggling to find directions for sustainable urban development. It has water-logged heritage that still need to be brought back to their original state, like the Sto. Niño Shrine and the Price Mansion. It also has Calvary Hill right in the middle, which I had thought should be configured to act as refuge sites in the event of the next storm surge.
Tacloban is still the prime gateway to the rest of the province and to neighboring Samar. Both provinces and their cities and towns have so much potential and beauty. One still hopes that this region finds a way to move forward, to rebuild better, and build for a future more resilient.
** *