The SM Group on Monday insisted that the common station for the Metro Manila’s overhead train system be constructed near its mall at North Edsa in Quezon City.
“SM has not received any communication from the DOTC [Department of Transportation and Communication] re the purported revised plans for the common station,” SM Prime Holdings Inc. legal counsel Edgar Ryan San Juan said in a statement.
“In any case, we remain hopeful that the government will respect the terms of our valid and binding contract to locate the common station in front of SM North EDSA,” San Juan said.
The Transportation Department said it would pursue two common stations, one near the SM North Edsa and the other beside Trinoma Mall, owned by Ayala Land Inc.
The agency’s new strategy was meant to resolve a conflict with SM over the common station. SM Prime earlier secured a Supreme Court stay order, barring DOTC from transferring the location of the common station to Trinoma Mall.
The Transportation Department decided to relocate the common station to Trinoma from SM North due to P1 billion worth of savings the government would realize from the transfer.
Under an earlier agreement between SM Prime and state-run Light Rail Transit Authority, the common station should be situated beside SM North Edsa. SM Prime even paid the government P200 million for the naming rights for the proposed station.
Metro Pacific Investments Corp. chairman Manuel Pangilinan earlier said the best solution to resolve the issue on common station was to build it somewhere between SM North Edsa and Trinoma shopping mall.
Pangilinan said the two common stations for MRT Line 3, LRT Line 1 and the proposed MRT Line 7 would be inefficient.
MPIC and Ayala Corp. lead the Light Rail Manila Consortium, which won the contract for the LRT1 Cavite extension project, which includes designing the common station near Trinoma.