While everyone is busy preparing for the holiday celebrations, the SM group—the country’s biggest retail conglomerate—is quietly celebrating the 30th anniversary of its first shopping mall in the country, SM City North Edsa.

Thanks to a subtle but timely reminder from the group, we can now recall that the mall, the original “SM City,” first opened its doors to the public in November 1985, with an initial footprint of only 125,000 square meters (but even then, that made it the largest shopping mall in the country).

Since then, the mall (rebranded as “SM City North Edsa” to differentiate it from the other “SM Cities” that have cropped up around the country) has grown in size to 498,000 sqm—an increase of almost 300 percent over three decades, thanks to space optimization as well as the acquisition of adjacent properties (excluding that small school along its Edsa frontage that stubbornly refused to be bought out).

Indeed, SM City is now the largest mall in the Philippines, cramped frontage notwithstanding.

“Ever the visionary, my father [Henry Sy Sr.] thought of building malls when he saw the shopping center development in the US during his business trips abroad in the 1950s and 1960s,” SM Prime Holdings president Hans Sy said in a recent speech to mark the mall’s anniversary. “That was the time when ‘burbs’ or suburbs were being built in the outskirts of big cities with a shopping mall as the center. He saw this development from the east to the west coast and knew this would happen in the Philippines.”

And if you have any questions as to the family’s commitment to the Philippine economy, it is worth noting that the flagship mall was built and completed during one of the most turbulent times in the country’s history, both politically and economically.

Sy recounted that when his father started building SM City North Edsa in 1983, people thought it was a crazy idea as it happened during a political crisis and when interest rates rocketed to as high as 45 percent. More so, the location of the mall was right smack in the middle of a marshland along North Edsa.

“They said SM City would not succeed, but the mall was an instant success. And the rest, as they say, is history,” Sy said in his speech to retail partners. SM also takes pride in the fact that the presence of SM City has helped boost property values in the area.

Data from the Bureau of Internal Revenue shows that the zonal value of properties around the mall have risen from only P2,500 a square meter in 1990 to P40,000 in 2000, representing an average increase in value of 150 percent a year over a decade. Not a bad investment, definitely.

The mall itself is also a job generator, with SM alone employing 6,000 staffers for the commercial center’s operations (excluding jobs created indirectly due to the commercial activities it generated), and has also become one of Quezon City’s top taxpayers.

The group is also proud of its energy conservation efforts, with 5,760 solar panels installed on the mall’s roof decks—enough to generate 1.5 megawatts of electricity, and offsetting enough carbon dioxide emissions equivalent to the planting of 6,000 trees each year.

So what’s next for SM City North Edsa? Possibly the most challenging aspect of its existence so far—ensuring that the government adheres to its contract of constructing the MRT common station in front of the mall as stipulated in an earlier contract between the government and SM.

And contrary to what has earlier been floated (that a deal between SM and the Department of Transportation and Communications is imminent), it seems that nothing much has moved in recent weeks. Tsk tsk.