Neda OK for SM station expired, says DOTC

INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

The transportation department announced Monday that a key government approval backing the SM group’s location for an elevated railway common station at its shopping mall in Quezon City had expired, but SM quickly responded that no expiry date provision existed.

The exchange was the latest in a word war that erupted after SM Prime Holdings Inc. last week sued the Department of Transportation and Communications for deciding to locate the common station near rival Ayala Land Inc.’s TriNoma shopping mall, across the street from SM City North Edsa.

SM Prime scored the government for not honoring a 2009 agreement and its lack of transparency while the DOTC defended its decision, saying it was cheaper to build at the new location and more advantageous to commuters.

The common station would link the Light Rail Transit Line 1 and Metro Rail Transit Line 3 elevated railways, and eventually, MRT Line 7.

An added complication was that the common station was bundled together with the P65-billion LRT-1 extension public private partnership deal, which would likely be bagged by the consortium of Ayala Corp. and Metro Pacific Investments Corp. this month.

In its statement Monday, SM Prime said “there was no expiry date provision in the 2009 National Economic Development Authority—Investment Coordination Committee documents on the SM North Edsa common station site, the copy of which is with us.”

“Assuming there was an expiration, SM was never made aware of, nor a party to it,” SM added. “They cannot use their failure to timely implement the project to justify a sudden change in the location of the station. They cannot use what was caused by their own fault to throw our contract away.”

The response was made as DOTC issued a statement that the approval expired in 2011 and was replaced by another Neda approval in 2013.

“The 2013 Neda approval, which is in effect, allows the common station to be built in the more advantageous location at MRT-3,” transportation department spokesperson Michael Sagcal said in a statement.

“Secondly, [SM Prime] was publicly quoted through its president in 2013 as saying that it does not mind where the common station is built, as long as it can exercise its alleged naming rights,” Sagcal said, referring to a P200 million grant that SM paid.