Acting Cebu City Mayor Raymond Alvin Garcia. | CDN Digital file photo
CEBU CITY, Philippines — A plan to establish a creative district in Cebu City is still a long way to go.
But this early, Acting Mayor Raymond Alvin Garcia said that they are now looking for a suitable area that they could use to accommodate businesses that are engaged in film, game development and animation.
Also, Garcia said that he needed to tap private sector support to make this dream became a reality.
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“The creative district shall be a major economic driver for Cebu City in the same way that the IT Park who now employs 200,000 employees. We shall do this while preserving history. heritage, identity, and culture,” Garcia said.
Creative district
Garcia formally announced his plan to establish a creative district here during his State of the City Address (SOCA) last July 3.
READ: Cebu City plans to develop a P10-billion creative industry district
In a press conference on Monday, July 8, Garcia said that he plans to pattern Cebu City’s creative district from the design of the Cebu IT Park that is now home to Business Process Management (BPM) and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) companies.
But unlike the Cebu IT Park, he wanted the city’s creative district to focus on businesses that are in the creative industry.
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“All of these, we want them to come here to Cebu [City] where it is an area for them to actually work. So, if we can invite all of these locators to come here and actually invest here and locate here, then can you imagine the jobs it might provide for our Cebuanos,” Garcia said.
Public-Private Partnership
To make his dream come true, Garcia said he is considering public-private partnership (PPP) to get public sector support in constructing the buildings that will accommodate creative industry locators like Pixar, an American computer animation film studio that is currently based in California.
While he studies the possibility of a PPP, Garcia said that his administration is also currently looking for a place that they could use for the establishment of a creative district here.
An ideal site, according to him, is the city-owned Block 27 located at the North Reclamation Area.
“Ang importante [is that] we identify the creative district so that we know how to plan it out and give incentives for the would-be locators,” Garcia said.