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ANGELES CITY: Local businessmen and foreign investors
yesterday called on the Air Transportation Office (ATO) to make
public the height limitations for buildings around the Diosdado
Macapagal International Airport (DMIA).
This developed in the wake of a
“building frenzy” in and around the Clark area in anticipation
for the DMIA’s full operation as the premier international airport
of the country.
“It has been our long desire to
see a truly international airport in the DMIA, we do not want to do
anything that may jeopardize this,” said Ruperto Cruz, president
of the Royal Garden Golf and Country Club, a joint-venture with Nam
Suek Development Corp. of South Korea astride the Angeles City and
Porac boundaries less than five kilometers southeast of the DMIA.
Cruz said they planned to
construct an eight-story hotel near the golf course so they earlier
asked ATO authorities for the height restrictions within the five-,
10-, and 15-kilometer radius of the DMIA as well as those on the
flight path of aircraft taking-off or landing at the airport.
“ATO told us that we should
first present to them our building plans and other pertinent
documents,” Cruz said, stressing that it was “a costly, if not a
ridiculous cart-before-the-horse proposition.”
“We come out with our plans
without any guidelines, we pay for them, then ATO would say we
exceeded the height limits. That’s a waste of money and other
resources,” Cruz noted.
Cruz asked the ATO to “first
issue the restrictions so that we have definite standards to follow
in our building plans.”
Korean investors in the hotel and
entertainment industry here have also aired the same appeal to the
ATO.
“The continuing influx of
Korean tourists, students and investors in Angeles requires an
increase in the number of hotels and in the upgrading of existing
ones. So we need to know how far up we can build,” a Korean
hotelier said.
A number of Korean establishments
located near the Friendship Highway that is directly linked to the
Clark Freeport lie within the five-kilometer radius of the DMIA.
The ATO field office at the Clark
International Airport Corp. said concerns about height restrictions
around the DMIA “will be best addressed to ATO Central Office in
Manila.”
--Joey Aguilar
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