CSI cool to city hall move to reconsider resort hotel project
MORE THAN A YEAR LATER
WHY only now?
This is the question being asked of the Dagupan City hall by the CSI Group of Companies after the Office of the Zoning Administrator sent a letter last week asking for additional requirements a year after the proposed CSI Hotel and Resort project in Lucao was rejected by the Lim administration.
The letter, dated 13 October 2011 and received by CSI on the 26th of October, came one year and two months after the company first submitted its plans and eventually shelved by city hall.
The letter of Architect Emmanuel Palaganas, deputized zoning administrator, to Caroline Fernandez, chief operating officer of CSI Warehouse Club, sought the submission of additional development plans and programs “relative to your application regarding the CSI Hotel and Resort Project”.
Last year, Palaganas sent a letter dated 24 August 2010 stating “we regret to inform you that we are hereby directed to refrain from issuing Locational Clearances and Zoning Development Permits for backfilled properties along De Venecia Extension Highway this city”, citing a memorandum of Mayor Benjamin Lim dated 09 August 2010.
This letter further stated, “your submitted building plans and other supporting documents will in the meantime be kept in this office for records purposes”.
In a news conference, Vice Mayor Belen Fernandez, elder sister of Caroline and chair of the CSI group, said the recent letter of Palaganas is suspect as it came a year late as CSI had long put its plans in the back burner having deemed the project proposal as denied given the advice that application was kept “for records purposes”.
“What took so long for the Office of the Zoning Administrator to decide to begin looking into the application of CSI when in fact it could have done this long time ago,” Fernandez said.
CSI has already re-aligned its business program in the last 14 months, diverting the supposed budget for the hotel and resort project for the expansion of its supermarket chain.
“Nawala ang opportunity because of the procrastination of the Office of the Zoning Administrator,” Fernandez said.
INVESTOR-UNFRIENDLY
She added that this case is a manifestation of how Dagupan has transformed itself into a city with unfriendly policy towards business, contrary to what is being bandied by the Lim administration.
In his recent letter, Palaganas wants additional plans and programs regarding the project’s drainage or flood control system/sewage treatment plan, etc. and other pertinent plans for flooding mitigation in the area.
“If they only looked at all the documents submitted by CSI, the additional requirements that they are now asking for are all there,” Fernandez said.
Further, Fernandez explained that if the family pursues the resort complex, they may have to revise the project design which had now become “obsolete” since many other projects with a similar design have been put up in other provinces.
“Pag ipinatayo namin yan, we will make some revisions and will take us few more months to study the project again. Kasi ang bilis ng mga changes ng designs and we want our own designs to be the only one in the country,” she said.
She added that the controversial restaurant being put up on a backfilled property by the bank of the Dawel River is no different from the hotel and resort project of CSI and the former was allowed to proceed even without a building permit.
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