The APEC Villas: Magnificence By the Bay

                             for 18 Heads Of State

by Jojo A. Robles
29 September 1996

(Sunday Times Magazine sneaks a peek at the Triboa Bay Estates,
home-for-a-day to APEC's 18 heads of state. Builders are pulling out all the
stops to make it the toniest address ever in the whole archipelago.)

In a secluded cove tucked into one corner of Subic Bay, in the heretofore
uninhabited side where the crystal-clear, fish-laden sea washes the roots of
the Elysian virgin forests of the former US naval base, thousands of workmen
labor day and night to put the finishing touches on 21 ultra-luxurious homes.

The workers come from all over the Philippines, proud masters of their
crafts of masonry, carpentry, plumbing, and landscaping, a virtual army of
skilled labor, the best to be found hereabouts.

Earth-moving machinery rumble along over a nearly-finished pathway which
leads from the highway above to the houses, competing for attention with the
incessant hammering, sanding, and other workmanlike noises in the otherwise
idyllic setting of forest and sea.

To one side of the compound, on a natural incline below the highway,
landscapers are laying down what appears to be a ground-level trellis, where
ornamental plants will be individually planted.

As for the houses themselves, no two are exactly alike, even if they are
obviously thematically united. The tile roofs, ornamental metalwork, French
windows, and concrete filigreed arches they have in common all proclaim
"Mediterranean." Strangely, one villa has a semi-circular, glass-enclosed
facade in the middle of two wings extending outward. Just like a scaled-down
White House, if the US President's residence had been designed in southern
France or Spain.

Sitting behind the wheel of his Pajero, William Cu Unjieng, the man who
dreamed up what is sure to become the country's most exclusive residential
enclave, is content. "To think that a lot of people thought it just couldn't
be done, under the circumstances," he muses.

Cu Unjieng still goes to the site everyday, even if, as head of one half of
the contracting company which is building the villas, he can afford to
merely delegate.

"I have to be here because I don't want to take any chances," he says in his
soft-spoken manner. "You can't take any chances when you're going to play
host for 18 heads of state."

But one senses that part of the reason Cu Unjieng visits the villas each day
is because he just loves to look at his handiwork. In conversation, his
pride in his houses definitely shows.

"You will probably find houses as nice as these in Forbes Park," he says.
"But 21 of them side by side? I don't think so. And look at that view on the
other side of the water. It's just so beautiful."

The view directly behind the villas is indeed magnificent. The placid water
is broken only by the slightest of ripples, which end at the feet of some of
the densest (and rarest) stands of trees anywhere, rising gently on a slope.

Somehow, "beautiful" doesn't do justice to the sight.


If you've never heard of Triboa Bay Estates, don't worry. You will soon.

Right now, what promises to be the toniest address, bar none, in the entire
archipelago is collectively known as the APEC Villas, the home-for-a-day of
the 18 heads of state who will descend on Subic Bay for the leaders' summit
of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation in late November.

The clubhouse of 21 houses and a clubhouse on the shores of the cove known
as Triboa Bay in the former Subic Naval Base in Zambales is by far the most
ambitious luxury housing project in the country.

And that's saying a lot, in a country experiencing its biggest building boom
since the days of Imelda Marcos' "edifice complex," when the First Lady
seemed to be putting up one gigantic structure a month.

So the villas are exclusive and definitely expensive. But while they may
look no different on the outside from the showcase homes of the rich, in
say, Acropolis or Dasmarinas, the Triboa houses are in a class of their own.

"A house is a house is a house," says Cu Unjieng. "But these are unlike
anything ever built here. For one thing, they are absolutely fireproof."

Cu Unjieng explains that as a security measure, everything in the villas-
even the wooden doors and panels, the deep pile carpets, the heavy cloth
table napkins, and even the pillow cases and bedsheets- have been chemically
treated to resist burning.

"Having a fire in the house is the last thing a visiting head of state- or
the eventual house-buyer- should be worried about," the builder says.

For another thing, everything in the house, except for the concrete, the
steel, and the aggregates, are imported from the most prestigious suppliers
around the world. The marble and the tiles are Italian, the high-tech
appliances and furniture American, the wood Australian, the crystal and
china French, and the plumbing solid-copper ("they last forever") German.

First class, all the way, became the villa builder's mantra.


What makes the Triboa project even more amazing is the timetable for its
completion, which Cu Unjieng has stuck to religiously.

We first talked about this project with my partner, Edwin Roceles, in
December," he says. "We broke ground in January amd we have to deliver the
houses by the end of October. Now we are down to the final 10 percent, which
are the interiors and the landscaping.

It was a project no other builder would touch. At first, President Fidel
Ramos and Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority chairman Richard Gordon wanted to
bid out the contract, but there were no takers, Cu Unjieng recalls. It was
Gordon who enlisted Roceles, whose Invest Builders Corp. joined forces with
Cu Unjieng's Financial Building Corp. to build the villas.

The first thing the partners did, naturally, was to assemble the architects
to design the homes, They eventually settled on four- Danny Bunag, Roger
Villarosa (last year's Architect of the Year winner), Manuel Minano, and
Jeffrey Long- all acknowledged names in their field.

"The timetable was so strict and the requirements were so daunting," says Cu
Unjieng, whose FBC built the PCI Bank Towers in Makati, among many
landmarks. "But we took it on because it was such a challenge. And also, the
idea that we were doing something for the country, to showcase it before 18
heads of state."

If it was the challenge that attracted Roceles and Cu Unjieng, the project
did not disappoint them. By the time the ground was prepared for
construction, it was already the end of February.  

"One whole month was consumed just to remove the seven magazines on the 11
hectares beachfront land set aside for the houses," the builder recalls.
"And then, that took a lot of ingenuity."

The magazines in question are not the published variety, but the armored,
ground-level bunkers which dot the naval reservation and serve as
camouflaged storehouses for US Navy ammunition.

Designed like small, concrete-and-steel hangars, the magazines were built to
withstand 1,000-pound bombs launched from the air by enemy aircraft. Tearing
them apart required a lot of homegrown Filipino resourcefulness. And Cu
Unjieng figures he can make a tidy sum out of the experience in the bargain.

"it's a good thing we have a genuis engineer who figured out how to do it,"
he says. "Now we have developed the technology and the others will come to
ask how we did it. As you know, there are so many of these magazines all
over the base."

The demolition of the ammunition magazines was such a time-consuming task
that actual construction began only in March, according to Cu Unjieng.

Then there was the manpower required by such a deadline-conscious project.

"We had to get craftsmen from all over the country because there were not
enough of the skilled workers that we required in Olongapo and nearby
areas," Cu Unjieng says. "That made us, at one time, the biggest employer in
all of Subic. Once we had 4,000 workers in two shifts, most of whom we had
to house and feed. Our food budget alone for the project reached Pesos 20
million."

But Cu Unjieng, who has spent most of the last 10 years of his 30-year
career as a builder putting up houses and structures in Florida in the US
and in the Middle East, says no better workmen can be found anywhere else.

"I've never seen better workers, as far as skill is concerned," he says.
"The project is truly a showcase of the best in Filipino talent and ability."


God, Goethe once said, is in the details. Inside the Triboa villas, the
details are nothing short of heavenly.

The basic villa is a two-level affair, with three upstairs bedrooms and a
downstairs study, plus a big living room and a kitchen, maids' and drivers'
quarters, and a garage.

The six-by-eight meter master's bedroom takes up one corner upstairs, with
two sides given over to large windows looking out into Triboa Bay.  It
features a large walk-in dressing room which leads out to an ensuite
bathroom with an upraised metal tub. A cleverly designed service passageway
allows maids to go upstairs from the kitchen to the bedrooms, eliminating
the spectacle of househelp crossing the living room to attend to guests above.

Downstairs, the study opens out into the beach below through large doorways.
Each house is surrounded by a completely landscaped 550-to-600 square-meter
property, which is connected by walkways to the other yards and houses.

Italian marble (at Pesos 7,000 per square meter "more expensive than land in
Paranaque," says Cu Unjieng) is liberally used in the foyers and downstairs
living areas. All houses will be wired to a fiber-optic communications
facility and centralized air-conditioning comes standard.

"You have to have basically the same amenities and features, even if no two
houses are the same," Cu Unjieng says. "That way, no head of state can say
that he has been given less luxurious quarters, even if they are only going
to stay for a short time. They can be touchy about such things."

The houses, he adds, have been designed not as vacation homes but for
year-round living. "We want people to live here," Cu Unjieng explains. "And
when they arrive, they only have to bring a toothbrush."

That's because the houses are fully furnished, down to the last dessert
spoon and spare down pillow with matching pillow cases. The interiors and
furnishings were all supplied by Beacon Hill, "the top supplier of luxury
furnishings in the United States," the builder says.

Another innovation in the project, Cu Unjieng says, is a "housebreaking"
period which he has devised to ensure that everything in the houses work
before they are used by the heads of state.

"I intend to invite groups of people- complete with their own household
staff- to live in the houses after they are completed before the APEC
meeting starts," he explains. "They will give me reports on each house, so
that we will know if every switch and faucet works. We can't have President
Clinton opening a hot-water faucet and getting cold water instead."

Outside, a floating crane will soon start clearing the rocks from the beach,
making it safe for swimming and watersports. Near one side of the compound,
pay loaders are digging up a diversion to a creek which cuts through part of
the property before pouring into the sea.

On the side of the enclave nearest to the highway, a metal-supported glass
dome is about to be placed on top of a circular clubhouse, to be used
eventually for functions and parties by members, who will include
less-privileged mortals who are unable to buy any of the 21 houses but who
will be fortunate enough (and wealthy enough) to be sold shares to the
Triboa Bay Estates country club.

Apart from getting to see the villas up close, club members can use the
equestrian and watersports facilities, the number-eight-shaped pool, the
gym, spa, ballroom, function rooms, competition-grade air-conditioned
badminton stadium, and the country's first international-standard
grass-surface tennis court.

Of course, only a very lucky few can get to live in the villas themselves.


There is no mystery to building 21 villas when only 18 heads of state of the
APEC member-countries are arriving.

"We have been told that some head-of-state delegations will require more
than one house," Cu Unjieng says. "We built 21 to be on the safe side."

The Sultan of Brunei, for instance, always travels to state affairs with his
brother, who requires accomodations equally luxurious as those provided his
head-of-state sibling.

Cu Unjieng laughs when asked if Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary (who have
promised to arrive regardless of the results of the November US presidential
elections) will stay in the White House-lookalike villa.

"That's what everybody says, but, frankly, I don't know which head of state
gets what house," he says. "I assume that they have already been assigned,
but the APEC people are not telling anyone."

The villas will be sold after the APEC summit, of course. "That's how I will
make money out of the project," Cu Unjieng says. House-buyers get 50-year
leases on the property, which is owned by the government and is not for sale.

No prices have been set yet, the builder says. "Anyway, prices will be
different from house to house," he explains. "That's because even if they
are similar, the work and materials that went into them vary."

In one design, he notes, "the trusses alone cost us Pesos 1.6 million already."

As for buyers, Cu Unjieng happily reports that there is no shortage of
people interested in buying the villas after the APEC meet ends. "We'll
probably have to hold a lottery, there are so many reservations," he says.
"But everyone is welcome to make a reservation- with no guarantees, of course."

But there was one reservation that Cu Unjieng turned down flat. "One big
company wanted to buy five villas," he says. "I said no because I don't want
them turned into staff houses."

Many of the country's richest persons are offering to buy the villas, Cu
Unjieng says. Of course, he will not disclose their names. "They love their
privacy," he notes.

One particular villa, however, is not for sale at any price, says the proud
builder.

"I have already picked that one out, and it is the one for me," he says, as
he leans on a concrete frame where a sliding door will soon be installed. "I
feel I owe it to myself and my family to live here. More than everything
I've done, this project will be my personal monument. And soon it will also
be a part of our nation's history."

The satisfied smile returns to William Cu Unjieng's face as he looks beyond
the houses he built into the placid sea and the forest further off.

"Isn't that view worth it?" he asks again.