BY CHRYSEE G. SAMILLANO
An ordinance naming as Simplicio A. Palanca Avenue the stretch of road between the SM Mall and Pope John Paul ll Tower at the Reclamation Area in Bacolod City, was recently approved by the Bacolod Sangguniang Panlungsod.
The ordinance authored by Councilor Renecito Novero said Simplicio “Sammy” Palanca was the lawyer and businessman who envisioned and assiduously worked to reclaim the foreshore land in Bacolod City and constructed a seaport on it.
As a result of his tireless efforts, a domestic seaport of international quality was erected and at least 250 hectares of Bacolod City foreshore lands were reclaimed on which now stands SM City among multi-billion peso worth of business establishments and other multi-million peso worth of enterprise, it said.
The ordinance said Palanca deserves to be honored and remembered well and long for such phenomenal accomplishments which have accorded the City of Bacolod economic opportunities in quantum leap proportion.
It was also through the magnanimous act of Palanca that the seven-storey Pope John Paul ll Tower with a 12-foot lighted cross was constructed on a piece of land along the street across the SM Mall at his own expense and that of Bacolod Real Estate Development Corporation (BREDCO) of which he was the president when he was yet alive, it said.
The land whereon the Pope John Paul ll Tower was constructed including the tower itself were donated by Palanca and BREDCO to the Roman Catholic Church of the Diocese of Bacolod City in honor of then Pope John Paul ll who visited Bacolod on February 20, 1981 and held a mass on that particular area in memory of the April 22, 1980 M/V Don Juan tragedy that resulted to the death of hundreds of passengers from Bacolod and Negros Occidental, the ordinance said.
It will do well to his honor and memory that the road which starts from the northernmost part of the reclaimed area traversing through portions of Barangays 13, 14 and 16, and stretches to a point somewhere in Brgy. 35 of this city be named after Palanca, it added.*
