On The Town

The way they talk about it, you’d think this was a place with only five stores. "It’s a neighborhood mall." That’s the way Parañaque residents like to describe it. Friends living it up in suburbia say with an air of superiority: It’s a place where you can go in your spiffy house clothes on Sundays (and that’s not an oxymoron, mind you) to soak up the sun, to eat, to shop, to while away time.

Me, a mallrat and resident of the opposite side of Metro Manila – I just shake my head in envy and with disgust at this obvious show of pride and affection for the mall.

The subject of this boasting by friends is Alabang Town Center (ATC), a mall that did grow from a neighborhood center serving a small community into a large commercial center serving neighboring cities. It did start as a supermarket-two cinemas-and restaurants venue in the mid 1980s, and like the huge residential subdivision nearby, it continuously expanded over the years. The new buildings were connected. But unlike its sister mall, Glorietta in Makati, the courtyard created in the middle of the structures remained open. Called Town Plaza, it is a breezy venue for people watching and catching one’s breath after marathon shopping for adults and playing on the plastic jungle gym for kids.

The mall’s design was largely dictated by its environment. Back when living in virgin Parañaque earned you a pitying "Omigod, that’s so far!" comment, the mall was being built on uneven grassland, hence the interesting structures that arose. It would have been really absurd to build it Makati style where buildings stand elbow to elbow or to enclose it in a box when there was so much space and sun you could take advantage of. Yet, credit should be given to the owners for how they envisioned the mall – with or without the luxury of space. Malls in Mandaluyong like SM Megamall, Robinsons Galleria and Shangri-La Plaza could have built more open and interesting buildings too, having grown out of marshlands, yet they chose to enclose their spaces and pay no attention at all to landscaping. If they had built the way ATC did, imagine how beautiful and different the landscape of Ortigas Center would be today.

Alabang Town Center, on the other hand, instead of reproducing vertical structures that were sprouting in the thriving commercial districts in the 1980s looked for inspiration elsewhere: Southern California, home of mission style architecture in America.

Tracing its roots to California’s Spanish colonial period, mission style architecture harks back to the simple adobe churches built by the state’s Spanish colonists. True to the mission style churches, ATC also built a bell tower (which, unfortunately, doesn’t have a bell).

The shopping center combines aspects of arts and crafts, and decorative arts in the details of its interiors. It also found new expressions through the combination of the mall formula and the lifestyle that was beginning to define Parañaque.

In the same way that the architecture of La Jolla and San Diego reflects the cultures of the cities, ATC mirrors south of Manila way of life: Relaxed and very much at home in the sun.

"The architecture of the mall sets the tone for the type of ambience that you want," says Javier D. Hernandez, deputy general manager of ATC. "Ours is a suburban shopping center. People perceive it as an expansion of their community, of their neighborhood." Even the activities at the covered activity center are definitely for lazy afternoons away from the city: puppet shows, clown shows – the type that defines suburban living – hell or paradise, depending on whether you feel like the late suburban housewife Erma Bombeck, bored out of her wits and resorting to talking to her children’s guppies, or like Woody Allen loving and hating the city but still staying put.

Alabang Town Center has several buildings, some of them two floors, some of them three owing to the uneven land it is built on. Parking spaces are all around the center, which reminds one of America’s strip malls where you can park right in front of the shops you’re going to. This setup’s advantage is that it forces the mall operator to pay attention to the grounds outside as consumers will be walking around, and the disadvantage is that to people unfamiliar with it, parking can get confusing.

The people behind the expansion/renovation design (construction was from 1997 to 1999) were awarded an ICSC (International Council of Shopping Centers) Certificate of Merit last year for the Expansion of an Existing Structure category. The mall was designed by William J. Higgins of Architecture International, with the local architects of GF and Partners, Architects Co., and the interiors designed by Robert A. Alejandro of Papemelroti.

The interiors of ATC emphasize individuality and cohesion. In the Corte de las Palmas building, the coolest area in the center – with its fountains and palm trees, wide corridors and vaulted ceilings – has cafes and casual dining restaurants on its two floors (with a proper bookstore to go with the coffee places, naturally). Here, they let the food outlets decorate the walls in their own style. Christine Hernandez, assistant marketing manager, says, "You see the creativity of each merchant. The beauty of their design also brings in customers."

Cafe Breton, for example, has a huge map of Brittany painted on the ceiling of its al fresco area; Tequila Joe’s has Mexican icons. Trompe l’oeils (windows of ancestral homes in the Promenade building), and art and crafts decor are other features. In the expansion building, each corridor has decor in metal – Filipino icons such as a sombrero-ed man with a dirty ice cream cart, another sombrero-ed man with a fighting cock, a flower vendor, calesas, jeepneys, etc.

"Our shopping centers have evolved," says Hernandez. "They’re now more than just a venue to do hard-core shopping for clothes or groceries and things like that. Now people come to the mall to be entertained, to hang out. ATC is perfect for that because it’s very laid-back in its aesthetics. People like Alabang Town because it’s not just four walls snapped together."

Speaking of shopping, marketing manager Maricris Bernardino boasts that ATC has been home to first-time entrepreneurs that have branched out to other malls. Halo-halo specialist Coolman started at ATC, so did Store One, which also opened at Glorietta under the name Restoration.

"We have a bargain center for people from all walks of life," she says, citing Brands for Less, a store that sells export overruns. "We have everything for everybody. If you want high-energy activities, we have an area for that; if you want to just chill out, we have places for that. The mall addresses each mood and preference. Practically everywhere you go, there’s a place for you."

"We’re not a huge shopping center, which is why we wanted to make sure we have the best of brands whether in dining, entertainment or apparel," says Hernandez. "We’re not just for the affluent either because we serve not just the gated subdivisions. People from the Calabarzon area come here to shop."

The mall is divided into areas. There’s the Corte de las Palmas; Motortown for car aficionados; Promenade will be redesigned to cater to hobbyists and will have stores carrying athletic equipment; Commerce Mall for high-end shopping; and Alabang Mall Extension, which has local Filipino brands for apparel and Home Zone for furniture and home accents.

South of Manila – Muntinlupa, Las Piñas, Alabang and Parañaque – according to Maricris, has only 30 percent of the A-B and upper C market, the rest is broad C and D. "ATC mirrors this community," she says, as if to explain the range of people we saw walking around the mall. On an ordinary weekday, ATC gets about 109,000 people, on weekend about 134,000 people.

It’s modest traffic compared with the giant models. But that seems to suit ATC mallers just fine. As diehard Parañaque residents say:Who wants an overcrowded mall on a weekend?