Pasig City will build a new City Hall “campus” to replace the current buildings that assessors said are now structurally inadequate, Mayor Vico Sotto said Sunday during the “Gabi ng Pasasalamat” event celebrating Pasig’s 450th founding anniversary.
Sotto said the project would be the biggest in Pasig City’s history, requiring a 10-year masterplan, and that the new City Hall itself would take two years to build. He did not say how much the project would cost.
The adjoining buildings would have open spaces and playgrounds for the city’s children, would be earthquake-proof with an evacuation center and a senior citizen’s center, the mayor added.
The renovations would extend to the adjacent Mega Market, which would also benefit the market vendors and truly make the new City Hall one for the future, Sotto said.
He had teased the plan a day earlier, posting on his social media: “We have started to outline the plan not because we want it, but because we need it. Our sense of urgency is strong because the danger continues to be more imminent.”
Sotto explained that the current city hall had started as a smaller municipal building in 1963. Over the decades, several additions were made to it and three other buildings were built close to it, making up the current Pasig compound.
A report the Mayor’s Office requested from independent assessors in the first quarter this year showed the compound’s problems include 62 columns and 451 girders or beams that are “structurally inadequate,” thus making the whole City Hall “structurally unsound.”
Sotto said the city government first considered repairing the old buildings, but more than 24 engineers and architects they consulted did not recommend retrofitting the buildings.
