SM City Cauayan

The property where the campus of Isabela Colleges lies has been bought this year by SM. The first SM mall in Isabela will be in our town but at the cost of removing a school. Demolition of the campus buildings has already started last August.  

Both the elementary and the college building will have to be demolished in order to make way for the construction of the mall. First to go is the college building. No one would be able to recognize that this was a former school building if not for the remnants of bulletin boards on hallways and blackboards in every empty classroom. The high school students occasionally roam around the building walking over the rubble and going through the empty halls of the building where their fathers or mothers studied back in the day.

 

 

View of the empty lot just behind the college building where the SM mall will be built. The mall will extend beyond the grounds of the campus to the huge empty lot behind it. The lot, which includes the campus grounds, is owned by a certain family here in our town and they sold the land to SM. This will be the first SM in the province and is supposedly a move to supplement the city's progress and development. Economically, the construction of this mall will create employment opportunities for the workers here in our province. 

Idle workers, who have been hired to demolish the campus buildings, wait for their food to be cooked. They work quickly in order to finish by mid-September when the actual construction of the mall will commence. These workers are staying on 3rd floor and they have made it their temporary residence while the demolition is ongoing. Interestingly, these workers have been saying that during the night they hear eerie noises which they claim to be ghosts. They reported that since the first day of demolition the weird noises have been increasing more and more from footsteps to scratching on the walls. 

School documents are scattered over the floors of the building together with scrap wood and rubble. When the workers are bored, they would from time to time pick up random papers and read them for leisure. They would then use these papers to start fires for their cooking or to warm them if ever it gets cold in the night. 

 

Some classes are still being held for the currently enrolled students of Isabela Colleges. The elementary wing has not been demolished yet so classes are still ongoing for now. These kids will be displaced soon and will have to look for other schools. For now the deserted college building serves as their playground 

An elementary teacher reminisces about the many years she spent teaching at this school. She laments the demolition of the school for the construction of the SM mall. She maintains that as long as the buildings of the elementary wing are still there she would continue to teach the young students. 

Isabela Colleges shot from the entrance gate. The student goes back to school after having lunch outside the school premises. 

There would be nothing left for students to come back for in the future except for a big blue SM sign.