Araneta Center
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The Araneta Center is a 35 hectare commercial area in Quezon City, Philippines. It is visited by over one million people every day.
The area was developed by the Araneta family in the late sixties as an alternative commercial, recreational, and shopping node in the northern part of Metro Manila. With its scores of retail shops, throngs of illegal hawkers vendors on the street selling cheap local and imported merchandise (mostly from China), and second rate movie theaters, it became a traditional business district on a smaller scale compared to the Makati City Central Business District. Within the center, residential land use is practically non-existent, but it is surrounded by high-density residential areas.
At the center of the area is the 50,000 capacity Araneta Coliseum, a popular site of many musical concerts and basketball games and once was world's largest coliseum.
Araneta Center houses a chain of 5 malls, a carnival, a market and a large inter-provincial bus terminal. One of its past attractions include the New Frontier Cinema, once a premiere movie theater but closed for major improvements; Manila COD, used to be a large department store which was noted for making Christmas holiday attractions outside of its building; and Queen's Supermarket, brought down by a fire in the 1980s.
In recent years, the Areneta Center has been redeveloped towards a more contemporary retail and recreational center that has appeal not only to the masses but also to the middle class, capitalizing on the opportunity arising from the railway station of the mass transportation system (MRT) along a major thoroughfare (EDSA highway).
External links
- Official site of the Araneta Center (http://www.aranetacenter.net/)