San Miguel doubles down,
plans a coastal expressway
to link Bulacan airport
He has not even finished reclaiming the 2,500 hectares for his ambitious international airport, but San Miguel chief executive Ramon S. Ang has already secured preliminary government approval to build a coastal expressway that would connect Navotas, the North Luzon Expressway, and Manila with his planned Bulacan airport.
Even better, the proposed 12-kilometer Obando (Bulacan)-Muzon (Navotas) Expressway is just the first phase of a "bigger project that will link the envisioned 12,000-hectare township that features a residential zone, government center, seaport, and an industrial zone," according to a San Miguel briefing paper.
That 12,000-hectare township refers to San Miguel's plan to reclaim a new city off the coast of Navotas, a reclamation project that would expand Navotas' present land area of 1,069 hectares by a whopping eleven times.
Dwarfing even the already ambitious Bulacan airport, the combined Navotas expressway-land reclamation project in Navotas has been master-planned by the Singapore government-owned Surbana Jurong consultancy as "the southern gateway to the New Manila International Airport."
San Miguel subsidiary and project proponent, Argonbay Construction Company, already held two public scopings last month in Navotas and Obando, Bulacan to solicit the reactions of the local residents and businesses.
But even before the public hearings, San Miguel has already gained regulatory headway and community acceptance from the Navotas-Malabon-Valenzuela publics with the conglomerate's massive dredging of the Tullahan-Tinajeros River that effectively ended flooding within the coastal areas.
In turn, the estimated 1-million cubic of sand, silt, and gravel that San Miguel had so far dredged from the historically flood-prone riverway has been used, according to industry chatter, to reclaim land for the Bulacan airport.
After it shall have obtained the final government approval, San Miguel has committed to finish the 12-kilometer elevated roadway in two years, with the Singaporean consultancy group even relocating an executive, Chih Kang Loh, to oversee the project.
According to San Miguel, it had already secured even before the actual construction lease agreements with unidentified landowners where "the project will traverse private properties."
San Miguel estimates that the coastal expressway would cost $144 million, including the connections to Road 10, Navotas fish port, Manila North Harbor, NLEX Bocaue and NLEX Balintawak.
The coastal expressway would complement San Miguel's MRT-7 project, which is being rushed for a partial opening by December, that will link the Bulacan airport from the common rail terminal on Edsa and North Avenue.
Another view of the proposed coastal expressway.
The proposed commercial/business district, to be reclaimed from the sea, will be 11x bigger than Navotas itself.
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