The investors are planning to bring mixed use development in the area, a prime lot near the City College of Naga and adjacently located to the site of the proposed TESDA Hub along Almeda highway.

A family of businessmen in Daet, Camarines Norte is investing a multimillion-peso commercial complex in a 9.5 hectare of land located in one of the city’s new growth corridors.

To be called the Naga Global Business Park, the site will come as the newest center of commerce and trade in the city with an estimated total manpower complementation of 1,000 to 1,500 people.

Mayor Nelson Legacion, in his message during the project’s ground breaking ceremony, said the business venture is expected to bring employment opportunities to the Nagueños aside from boosting further the city’s socio-economy.

With the upsurge of big, medium and small enterprises that dominate the city’s trade and commerce, Naga has gained its popularity as the center of economic and business activities in the entire Bicol region.

Nowhere in Bicol can one find large businesses ranging from retailing to wholesaling, manufacturing and processing and other services such as entertainment, resorts, movie houses, restaurants, and financing institutions like banks and insurance companies, but in Naga City.

Zeni L. Yao, chairman of Lautan Luas, Inc., said the development master plan “of the dream project” outlines the establishment of residential and commercial buildings and other facilities that are responsive to the need of the public.

The company’s chairman emeritus is Zeni’s husband Joseph Yao, of J. Yao Brothers Trading with Jerson and Joel Yao.

“We shall be putting up a leisure, entertainment and recreation facilities here, a supermarket, a business process outsourcing company, a bagsakan of native and fruit products (e.g. the Davao pomelos and Baguio strawberries), a residential building, a restaurant like the Dampa in Cubao and many more,” she said.

Jandrick Arvin Yao, son of Joseph and Zeni, who is also the company’s president, said that although they do not have the date yet as to when the construction works would start, he guessed that two or three years are not enough to see the entire Park fully operational.

The family along with Mario Villanueva, president of Metro Naga Chamber of Commerce and Industry (MNCCI) and president of the Naga College Foundation, thanked Mayor Nelson Legacion and the Naga City Investment Board for inviting the Yaos to put up the business venture in the city.

From 2019, when Legacion began his first term in office, the Naga City government was able to establish five new growth areas: the Balatas New Development Area; the Sta. Cruz New Development Area; Carolina Development Area; the People’s Park and Recreation Center in Barangay Mabolo; and the area in Almeda Highway in Brgy. Concepcion Pequeña where the Naga Global Business Park will rise.

Johan Yao, a director of the company, said that everyone can look forward to see modern architecture in the edifices that they are going to construct especially the grand market.

The Committee on Investment, Trade, Industry and Economic Enterprises of the Sangguniang Panlungsod here is set to formally endorse to the Office of the City Mayor its proposal to create a technical working group that will conduct a feasibility study on the planned construction of a new public market.

This was bared to this paper by City Councilor Jose Perez, chairman of the SP committee, who said that the project will bring more economic advantages to the city aside from decongesting traffic and commuters in the already overcrowded Central Business Districts I and II.

In an interview with Mayor Nelson Legacion, he said the plan, once materialized, is perceived to fire up enormous economic activity in the city.  “What we need to consider well is the exact location of this big-ticket project that promises about development of another new growth area in our place,” he said.

Legacion also made mention of his administration’s plan to put up a 2-level or 3-level satellite market on a 3,000 square meter lot in Barangay Sta. Cruz.  The project is a component of the Sta. Cruz New Development Area which is seen to open up new business and job opportunities in the area. The site sits on the outskirt of the city’s old business district that is host to at least two universities, urban housing projects, a mall, and a ballooning population that call for more mobility and access to various products and services. Already, a City Health Office II and a national high school have risen in the area.

Although no specific site yet, the new public market project will rise somewhere in the northeastern part of the city where the upper barangays of Carolina, San Isidro, Pacol, and Cararayan are situated.

“Once realized, the new public market will also cater to the needs of the residents of nearby barangays of Del Rosario, Concepcion Grande and even those in Barangay San Felipe where new access roads will be constructed, including building a new road that will serve as a diversion route by-passing the Concepcion-Del Rosario section of the national highway,” the councilor said.

Perez said the existing Naga City People’s Mall (NCPM), popularly called as Naga City supermarket then, was constructed in 1964 and has been in operation since 1969, when the city’s population was only around 70,000. 

The city councilor said that it is good enough that a new public market be constructed to be able to provide the city, now with more than 209,000 people residing (based on 2020 census), and still increasing in the next few years,” he added.

“Talipapa in the barangays cannot help the consumers to get lower prices because their merchandise at these satellite markets are procured from the NCPM and thus travel cost and profit margin are immediately added to the products retailed at the satellite markets,” Perez said.

The councilor, who is also the chairman of the Committee on Consumer Protection in the Sangguniang Panlungsod, said like the NCPM, the new public market will become a bagsakan, a service landing area for goods and products at wholesale prices which redound to low prices when sold at retail in the market’s various stalls and stores.

“A new public market will certainly means a new growth corridor, a new center for business, trade, and other socio-economic activities,” Perez added.

The councilor stressed that with the city’s current population of over 209,000 which makes Naga a highly-urbanized city, it is only right that we should be prepared for its burgeoning economic growth and progress which should begin with another new mass-based public market.