BACOLOD CITY — The Bacolod Welcome Park will be up in time for the highlights of the 39th MassKara Festival.
The welcome marker is being constructed by property giant Megaworld on the boundary of the cities of Bacolod and Talisay in Negros Occidental, along the Bacolod-Silay Airport Access Road.
Harold Brian Geronimo, senior assistant vice president for public relations and media affairs of Megaworld, who was in the city on Tuesday, said the structure will be completed by October 15.
“I’m not sure yet of the lighting and everything else, but this month, we will be able to do that,” he said.
The Welcome Park, which will greet both incoming and outgoing visitors, will have as its centerpiece a 7.2-meter marker featuring colorful masks that will light up at night.
Geronimo said the inauguration of the Bacolod Welcome Park will be held after the MassKara Festival, but tourists will be able to see the marker during the festival highlights.
“In the later part of the month when tourists from other places will come to Bacolod for the highlights of the MassKara, they can take photos, they can drop by,” he added.
The 2018 MassKara Festival will be held from Oct. 8-28, with highlights set on Oct. 26-28.
The MassKara Festival-themed design for the Bacolod Welcome Park was unveiled by Mayor Evelio Leonardia and Megaworld senior vice president Jericho Go last June 18.
The ceremony was held on the day Bacolod commemorated the 80th year of the signing of its Charter, by then President Manuel L. Quezon on June 18, 1938.
Leonardia, inspired by the iconic “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign in Nevada, United States, pitched the idea of the welcome park to Megaworld, which has a 53-hectare township development on the boundary of Bacolod and Talisay.
Go earlier said the project is a milestone for Megaworld since it will be the first time the company will build a city’s official welcome marker similar to the one in Las Vegas.
Megaworld will construct the marker at no cost to the city government. (Nanette Guadalquiver/PNA)
