Thursday, December 16, 2004

The Mallification Of Cubao

The new Gateway Mall in Araneta Center, Cubao is a fascinating place. It looks like a Makati mall plopped in the middle of Cubao. It’s a very high-end looking mall with high-end shops and restaurants (it even houses the first branch of the returning Taco Bell here in the Philippines.) And its Cineplex is amazing—they boast of having Lay-Z Boy type of seats. (But to date only four out of ten cinemas are open.)

What’s more, they’ve incorporated the one and only Araneta Coliseum into the Gateway Mall—think of it as building a mall around the coliseum. When they’re finished it will look like they made a coliseum within the mall, not the other way around.

But while the setting is Makati, the people are very Cubao. And that incongruity takes a bit getting used to.

Perhaps the Aranetas of this world were thinking, “Why should the Ayalas and the Gokongweis have all the fun—and malls?” I wonder if the tres chichi-rich of the San Juan villages and the hoity-toity of the Cubao and Katipunan areas will make Gateway their playground? So far it’s very convenient for the LRT- and MRT-riding crowd, which is the hoi polloi crowd. But with the expanded Rustan’s there, plus the Italianni’s and Burgoo’s and the Naf Naf’s and the Coffee Bean and Tea Leafs of this world opening soon, perhaps Gateway will serve as the gateway for the rich to come back to good old Cubao.

Will the bakal boyz of Cubao return too? Will they change their packaging (meaning, their outfits) to adjust to a more high-end crowd? We’ll see.