Good ol’ Harrison Plaza closes doors after 43 years
As the country welcomed a new year and decade, one iconic structure said its goodbye. Harrison Plaza Shopping Center, after over four decades, officially ceased operations on the last day of 2019.
The news of the mall’s closure brought on a wave of nostalgia among its past and current visitors, whether Baby Boomers or Generation X’ers.
a De La Salle University (DLSU) student who lived right by the mall since 2016, feels it, too.
While she was not witness to the glory days of the mall, Ferrer found the mall fascinating, “like something that belonged in a movie set of an ‘80s film.”
“Before visiting Harrison for the first time, my parents [had] already told me that the mall was old [and that] it was around when they were studying at DLSU,” she tells Manila Bulletin Lifestyle. “I didn’t really grasp what ‘old’ meant until I stepped inside the mall and felt like I was in a place where time had stopped.”
With the impending redevelopment of the area, Ferrer said she would miss seeing the mall along with the view of the Manila Bay sunset, as well as eating at one of its fastfood restaurants “that looks exactly like the ones I would go to when I was a
Maxine Ferrer,
kid, with the white interiors, metal chairs, and tiled counters.”
“The thing about Harrison Plaza is that it has become more than just a structure,” she said.“It truly belongs to the community and they will feel its loss the most.”
She said that apart from being a source of livelihood for many people, including the blind masseuses, it’s also a memorable place for generations of families, friends, and couples.
“As aged as this mall is, it also housed several generations’ worth of memories and stories within its walls,” she added in a Facebook post where she shared photos of Harrison Plaza that she took around August last year for a project. “It will be strange to look out my window and realize that in a few months’ time, it will truly be gone.”
PIONEER ATTRACTION
Located along Harrison Ave. cor. Pablo Ocampo St. in Malate, the mall is one of the oldest in Manila, and is the capital city’s “first modern shopping mall” and “first one-stop shopping mall.” Along with an equally modern Ali Mall in Cubao that opened before it, Harrison Plaza helped popularize the mall culture Filipinos live and breathe today.
Since opening its doors to shoppers in 1976, the iconic two-story structure offered many attractions, including an in-house skating rink, a bowling center, and a number of upscale stores. Guests from nearby hotels, students from universities, and even those from the provinces treated the mall as a must-visit back in the day for shopping and leisure.
It’s similar to the architecture and design of shopping malls in the US at the time, with a fountain at the center and an atrium where events like fashion shows were held. In its heyday, there were over 180 stores, restaurants, and service outlets, as well as four movie houses, and a supermarket. All of these helped the mall thrive up to the early ‘90s.
As new and bigger malls opened over the past two decades, however, Harrison Plaza—or simply HP to many patrons—could not keep up with the times and slowly lost the premier status it once held.
Razed by a fire in the early ‘80s, it was renovated between 1982 and 1984. This reinvigorated the mall for a while but it still struggled to compete with other malls. New additions such as Shopwise and increased foot traffic brought by a revived Jai Alai fronton in the ‘90s did not help either. Filipinos simply flocked to the newer malls.
Tiangge and ukay-ukay soon replaced the cinemas and Rustan’s. The mall interiors, meanwhile, started showing signs of aging, like cracked walls, fading paint, and consistently dim lighting.
PROMISE OF DEVELOPMENT
Rumors of closure and demolition to make way for an entirely new establishment have long hounded Harrison Plaza. Only in 2016, though, did reports confirm that the Martels, the family who has been managing the mall since its opening, are in talks with longtime tenants, SM Prime Holdings of giant conglomerate SM Group, to redevelop the area into a mixed-use property, likely a shopping center with a residential condominium.
By 2018, the talks were already in the final stages, with SM Prime ready to buy out the Martels from their mall’s lease contract with the Manila government and invest funds into the project.
Nov. 14 came what seemed like a confirmation that the redevelopment is pushing through. The management issued a memorandum giving tenants until Jan. 31 to vacate their spaces. And on the first day of 2020, the New Year was welcomed by everyone except for Harrison Plaza whose doors remained shut.