Baguio business want Session sidewalk for Panagbenga

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BAGUIO CITY (Jan. 17) — Discord hounds anew the 12th staging of the Baguio Flower Festival (Panag-benga) with the Baguio businessmen disagreeing with the grand plan to stage this year’s Session Road in Bloom differently.

Businessmen from Session Road, venue of one of the festival’s major events — Session Road in Bloom — on Feb. 26 to March 4, oppose the new Panagbenga regulation that business establishments can no longer use their frontages although they can extend in the middle of Session Road. Other prospective ventures who can shell out P18,000 for the space will be admitted instead.

“If you will not allow us use of the sidewalk, then we might as well request the City Council to open the road,” said businesswoman Edna Anton defying Panagbenga Chairman Damaso Bangaoet, Jr. last Monday during the regular session of the City Council.

Anton, who owns Sizzling Plate at the city’s prime thoroughfare said that Session businessmen were not consulted when the Hotel Restaurant Association of Baguio (HRAB) decided not to allow stalls or extensions in the sidewalks.

“I have not seen such a thing in my trips abroad and it is the first time in 11 years of the Panagbenga that we are doing this,” said Anton who said that they will not allow themselves to be victimized or used in HRAB’s “experiment”. She said, the HRAB plan will not make Session Road businesses bloom.

“Why do we have to suffer from your experiment,” said Anton who together with other businessmen including Star Café owner Donna Rufino and Mike del Rosario, franchisee of McDonalds trooped to the city council. “In the past 11 years, we cooperated with Session Road in Bloom and while we had to make sacrifices for the sake of the whole tourist trade,” Anton said in a letter to acting Mayor Bautista, Jr. and acting vice mayor Leandro Yangot, Jr. co-signed by 34 other establishment owners or their representatives from Session Road.

Anton went on to explain that they have the rest rooms which the “outsiders” cannot provide while they have been not remiss of paying taxes for the “remaining” 51 weeks of the year and not merely for the week which is utilized for the Session Road in Bloom.

The letter said to allow food stalls during the event poses unfair competition to the restaurants permanently doing business along Session Road. The businessmen insist that the closure of Session Road during the Panagbenga was originally conceived for flowers, flowering plants and related merchandise. They also assailed the process by which the plans were drawn without consulting the businessmen.

But a seemingly unrepentant HRAB President Anthony de Leon said that they will give special preference to establishment owners and that they utilize the area towards the center of the road. The sidewalks will be for pedestrian he added.

De leon retorted that the concept is actually to make Session Road in Bloom as attractive and “world class”, as his answer to criticisms that the upcoming festival as they plan will be for the elite and will exclude the ‘masa’. He assured the council that no illegitimate business would be allowed and that the screening would only allow those with official receipts and business permits.

Distraught, Bangaoet although said that they will look into the proposal as they would not like any hitches in the staging of his last Panagbenga as he is about to retire from handling the festival which he helped create in 1996.

He said, however, that this disappointed the HRAB which he asked to help in the staging of the more popular portion of the Panagbenga when the city’s most loved street is turned into the likes of Champs Elysee with promenade, cafes and curio shops and basking in soft music coming from stringed quartets. It is yet the latest innovation for the Session In Bloom portion compared the past years especially in 2006 when the Baguio Flower Festival Association-run Panagbenga made P6 million but turned Session Road into a ‘tiangge’ with 177 stalls where clothes and even underwears were sold, according to Bangaoet.

After the HRAB meeting that followed the encounter on Monday, de Leon seemed bent to continue with the plans and not give in to the demands of the Session Road businessmen.

Pressure though is coming from members of the City Council as some are bent on favoring Session Road business owners.

The plan to make Session Road in Bloom “more classy” earlier met criticisms as this year’s main organizers declared no poor stuff — no “isaw”, barbeque, fish ball, “ukay-ukay” nor anything that is “flea market”. # Ace Alegre for NORDIS