Maya Katigbak Colayco on managing the ‘coolest place to be in’

Maya Katigbak-Colayco wouldn’t have imagined that one day she would be managing what is considered the “coolest place to be in” by Filipinos.

Comuna is a creative neighborhood located at 238 Pablo Ocampo Sr. Ext. Makati. The former taxi terminal is now a space that transforms every month to house a creative community — burgeoning trailblazers and upcoming figures alike.

The builder and community manager of Comuna recently graced DAILY TRIBUNE’s Pairfect show with managing editor Dinah Ventura to talk about the ins and outs of creating a community at the heart of one of the country’s busiest cities.

DAILY TRIBUNE (DT): Tell us about how Comuna came about.

Maya Katigbak-Colayco (MKC): We’re a small family corporation. My mom is expressing her 50 years of development like philosophy, what she learned, how she wants to use a space in this property. This is like her culminating her culminating project.

She said “I’m 70 years old, when I enter a space I want to feel good. When I go in there I want to stay.” That’s sort of, interesting but not a specific guideline but it lets you know that she really wants people to have that same kind of experience.

We were getting a lot of bad designs for the place in the beginning. It was normal I think for an architect to say ‘let’s build you leasable space’ because sayang ang lupa kasi Makati. We should build you something that you can earn money from. We we’re getting a building, little pocket gardens.

We couldn’t actually get the proper design until I called up a friend of mine who’s not technically a practicing architect because he works for a big infra company. That’s Sylvester Wong who works for Aecom. I gave him the background, he’s American. He said, ‘I think your mom doesn’t want a mall or a building she wants a lifestyle center. Sounds about right. He said ‘give me the CAD files and I’ll see what I can do.’ He sketched something, which is the basis for what’s now Comuna, which is basically a building in the front and a big garden in the back, so 2/3 of the property. He got local partners to design it. It’s a Spanish guy and he saw a need for open space, a courtyard for circulation. So basically there’s a building and each floor has a four meter deep terrace. These were created for breathing space.

He called it Comuna, a Latin-American term for informal settler. It’s characterized by a lot of space, a central courtyard where people meet, congregate and share. We finished building it. My mom finished it with her vision, making it beautiful and taking her time doing it.

It was about a year after we finished doing it and then I started looking for people to occupy it. We were thinking who’s going to want to take this place during the pandemic because it’s a little bit out of the way. It’s in Makati, but on the edge of Makati. It’s not near a big residential area.

Originally, we wanted like a destination, like an F&B place for people to come to eat. Paano na kaya ito, we were pursuing some eccentric dream of building a beautiful building with a garden and a courtyard. Who’s going to come? I want to put up a business that my brothers and I want, it’s teeth whitening.

Sister-in-law is actually friends with Dwight Co who owns a lot of small independent food lines like Foul Bread, Bad Bird. He owns the line of Low Brow and Pepper PH. Dwight right away took a place. It’s his commissary, a small cafe for Low Brow. He invites his friend Dan Matutina to come in. He, I think, circulates in the world of really great branding and the whole independent restaurant scene.

For these three people, they discovered the place. It’s a very small community, it just happens that it is a very high-quality community. We didn’t look for them, it just happened. That’s how lucky I feel of the people who populated Comuna.

In one weekend another friend brought Manila Middleground, a group of graphic designers and illustrators. We also have a family that owns an art gallery. There’s also my sister and her husband of Good Intentions Books, a group of award-winning writers. Their space is part bookstore, but it’s actually their office where they do their commissioned works.

My friend Sylvester came back and opened a co-working/events place. He invited Kathy Saldana to open her office there. And the last one whom I feel very lucky to have gotten is JJ Acuña. He’s really mostly in Hong Kong, half the time. He built up the beginning of a practice here during the pandemic, looking for a permanent space. He got the last space. We have a bakery and an ice cream place as well.

DT: Was that something that crossed your mind when you were designing it with your mom?

MKC: Honestly when we were thinking of what would have been our ideal community, we wouldn’t have had the imagination for it be a group like this. This is better than anything we imagined.

DT: Are there any plans that you’re coming up with for the next months?

MKC: As we want sort of a place to bring guests, to bring regulars to. We’ve actually had a couple of Comuna-wide block parties, which were super fun. We had one in Chinese New Year called Maximum Chaos. We also had one in June called Art Block party and that was part of an exhibit in one of our spaces. It was an illustrator’s exhibit.

At this point, this is June, most of our tenants are either open or almost open. So, if we blast out the party, all of the food tenants can actually sell their food. The beer guys are almost ready even if the space isn’t ready. That’s really the way to do it. And then we asked all of our tenants who are not food tenants to prepare something that makes it interesting to go like a school fair. My sister, who owns the bookstore, had a spoken word event.

The Canlas family that owns the art gallery, their son Irwin is a professional photographer. He did free portraits. Manila Middleground had an art market. We had DJs and bands playing at Goto Monster.

We want to have another in August or September to mark our first year anniversary of the first guys that opened.

DT: There’s no place like this at the moment?

MKC: I don’t know. You need it because these guys are start-ups. You need to find a way to them. They’re all start-ups — but what they do is actually really good. Sarap ng beer. Sarap ng tinapay. Sarap ng kape. To nurture the community, do these events. The first-year party, you heard it here first, is going to be cute like a children’s party. Each of the stores has their own programming not just for the day but for the month.

On the more serious side, we’re planning to have a series of seminars on creative entrepreneurship. What’s available from government services like DTI.

DT: Was that your idea?

MKC: It emerged from conversations with each other.

DT: What was your life like before Comuna?

MKC: It was not nearly as much fun as I’m having now. Before Comuna, this chunk of my life that I’m in now, I’m a real estate developer. My project before Comuna is a subdivision in Marikina.

We built 50 town houses. I know how to build a subdivision, planning, forecasting, land development and marketing. All that stuff. It’s good to have that as a background. I’m not going to say we are great at it, but we know how to do it.

DT: But you didn’t really give that up when you took over Comuna?

MKC: Not at all. We’re just sort of in a pause — between projects. There was a time I was doing both at the same time. But that one started first so it finished first. I have sort of fallen in love with building communities.

DT: Before that you weren’t really practicing?

MKC: What I did before this, let’s go back to I grad school. I worked in DTI and BSP way back in the day. It was long enough to write a really good application to go to grad school. I went to grad school in the States and met my husband there. We moved to Hong Kong in 2003. We actually got married in 2003. Early marriage, post grad school.

I wasn’t working. I was lucky enough to have a chunk of my life where I was fully supported by my husband. But then I worked in real estate, also in Hong Kong but on the sales side as a broker. I know the hard stuff about selling and building a space.

I moved back here because I followed my husband for work. But that’s the time when I started the Marikina project.

DT: What does it take to run a place like Comuna?

MKC: There’s the back end and the front end. What I consider my front end is really facing the tenants. It’s seeing that they’re running well, doing well. What they need to run their space is available to them.

The second part, which I think is the unique part, is building the community. I don’t think there’s a playbook for community building. You just feel it because these are great people. When I’m there, I don’t know if I want to work or hangout. They all have their dreams of what they want to create of this space.

DT: So your days are now filled with all these?

MKC: Joy and happiness.

DT: Do you think that’s a trend? Growing spaces where people can come together?

MKC: It would be great. I think we need more spaces like this all around. Wherever something can sprout like that it should be there to draw a community together.