The NCCA is a step closer to owning the Metropolitan Theater!

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Conservationalists, rejoice!

Ivan Henares, Heritage Conservation Society President, announced on Facebook that the National Commission on Cultura and the Arts (NCCA) got the approval of the Department of Budget and Management to buy the Metropolitan Theater aka the Met.

It was Museum Director Jeremy Barns who told Henares of the good news, which he also confirmed to Rappler via SMS. “He added that the approved funds total PHP270million, matching the offer made by the Manila city government,” writes Pia Ranada on Rappler.

If you’ll remember, the NCCA and the city of Manila, led by Mayor Erap Estrada, are in a bidding war over the Juan Arellano-designed theater.

The City of Manila wanted to use a portion of the theater for Universidad de Manila College’s “Institute of Performing Arts.”

It offered GSIS a whopping PHP267 million to buy the theater, which the NCCA quickly acted on, by exercising its right of first refusal to sales of national cultural treasures, a right included in the 2009 National Cultural Heritage Act.

Then the NCCA moved quickly to ask Budget Secretary Florencio Abad to allow it to use a small part of the agency’s National Endowment Fund for Culture and the Arts to be able to match Manila’s PHP267.15 million bid.

“Barns said the NCCA, once it is given ownership of the theater, plans to restore it fully into a cultural center,” continues the Rappler Report.

Photo: Karla Mae Brazil/Wiki