THE classics come into play at the New Clark City (NCC) in Capas, Tarlac, where two world-class sports facilities—a 20,000-seat Athletics Stadium and a state-of-the-art Aquatics Center—sit on what used to be a US military facility situated on hectares upon hectares of grass and shrub land.
“If you build it, they will come,” was that classic line from the 1989 Kevin Costner film Field of Dreams—a line expressed in whispers in the movie but reverberates endlessly no matter the genre.
“It’s building something close to impossible,” says Nikko David, president of MTD Philippines, builder of the 9,450-hectare new metropolis that has risen from what was the former US military gunnery, Crow Valley, and radar facility Camp O’Donell.
From November 30 to December 11 this year, the NCC will be hot on the radar in this side of the globe as it becomes the main hub of the 30th Southeast Asian Games—the fourth time after 1981, 1991 and 2005 that the country is hosting the multi-sport regional competitions.
With the NCC’s stand-alone structures that include an Athletes Village, some 2,000 of the close to 10,000 athletes and officials from the 11 Asean countries will be housed in the facility that is master-planned to be a metropolis that has all the elements necessary to become a vibrant and robust economy.
Modern metropolis
“The New Clark City is a modern Filipino metropolis,” says Arrey Perez, Vice President for Business Development of the Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA).
“It is a showcase of what Filipinos could achieve if we work together and put our hearts into it,” adds Perez, who will serve as Mayor of the Athletes Village during the duration of the Games.
“It is a city built for a better quality of life for all…green, disaster-resilient and smart,” Perez adds.
Because it was a military facility not actually close to the US military facility that was Clark, the land where the NCC stands now wasn’t exactly agricultural.
“Just shrubs, grass and talahib,” says David, who has worked round the clock—24/7—to guarantee the delivery of the sports facilities.
Under the BCDA master plan for the NCC, the sports facilities were to
rise as a fourth- or fifth-phase
component of the development. But with President Duterte accepting the
country’s hosting of the Games in 2018, David and Perez say “they must deliver
the impossible.”
“Eighteen months—and nobody believed that we could deliver,” David says.
Eighteen months was the window given by the government—and the Philippine SEA Games Organizing Committee—to complete the world-class sports facility.
Finishing touches
“Now, we are completing the finishing touches,” David proudly says on Wednesday afternoon from his command post at NCC, overseeing preparations for test events in athletics and swimming for the Games in the next two weeks.
The NCC is just adjacent to Barangay Cristo Rey, the village then designated as the main resettlement area for residents displaced by Mount Pinatubo’s eruption in 1991.
Villagers from Cristo Rey and other nearby barangays and towns, David explains, form most of the close to 5,000-strong workforce who could proudly say “yes, we helped build that NCC with the SEA Games as its early coronation.”
Building the NCC, according to David, was made easier by its location.
“Unlike in Metro Manila and other urban areas, you don’t have to worry about the traffic and bans on trucks and heavy equipment,” he says. “We have the freedom of movement here.”
With the 30th Sea Games coming in as a priority, the BCDA and MTB Philippines tinkered with the NCC master plan that will be iced by the National Government Administrative Center, or NGCA.
‘Backup’ government
The NGCA, Perez explains, will become the seat of government in case the so-called “Big One” comes.
“Because the NCC is designed to be a metropolis, it offers work [jobs], schools and residences,” he says. “But part of the bigger plan is a backup government center. If the ‘Big One’ comes, the government will easily operate immediately.”
“And of course, there is to be entertainment and leisure—commercial centers and sports activities.”
David and Perez explain that in major developments, the sports components normally form part of the final phases of construction. But with the SEA Games as the facility’s crowning glory, everything arrived in reverse.
“The sports facilities here are a product of blood, sweat and tears—that almost nobody believed we can do it,” David sayd.
For Perez, the first phase is already a testament to Filipino ingenuity and capability.
“We are seeing world-class sports facilities rising for the world stage which we are all going to witness during the Sea Games,” he says.
Image credits: Bernard Testa