For months, I’ve been wondering what the huge construction along C-5 was. At first, I surmised that it’s a BPO center or something. Later, I heard rumors that it is a new SM mall. But it was only a few weeks ago that I learned that it is definitely an SM mall named SM Aura. It was all quite strange since normally you’d see huge signs indicating what’s being constructed.
It turned out that there was a reason for all the hush-hush. It seems that the land was supposedly provided to the local government by the Bases Conversion Development Authority (BCDA) for use as a civic center. The local government in turn leased it to SM who then developed a mall with space allocated for a civic center. Or a civic center with space allocated for a mall depending on how you look at it. But no matter how you look at it, that’s indication of wilful deceit in the part of SM.
Admittedly, SM Aura is way better looking than your typical SM monstrosities . But it’s still too big, too densely built. Such volume of people in that amount of space can only result in traffic congestion in the surrounding roads. And sure enough when it opened, traffic in that part of C-5 and Global City was snarled for hours. And I don’t expect it to get any better. Global City prides itself as a master planned development. And then something comes along and messes things up.
Reason’s like these are why I will not patronize SM as much as I can help it.