A sweet homecoming

When Crisostomo "Tom" Batac opened the Philippine office of his company Liberty Marble & Granite in 1996, he had only one reason: To have something to come back to in the Philippines once in a while. After all, it is most Filipino migrants’ dream to come back to his motherland after tasting sweet success in a foreign land.

Tom migrated to the US with his family when he was 23. As a young architecture graduate from UST, he had no idea what the future held for him. Neither did he think in his wildest dreams that after many years of hard work he would become one of the numerous success stories in New York City or that he would be traveling the world over and still miss the one place that held his heart.

"After traveling for business all around Europe (France, Italy, Spain and other marble-producing countries), you want to see your own country. Since most members of my family, except for one sister, are in the US, I wanted to have a reason to come home. Now, at least every month, I’m in Manila. It’s tiring, but I enjoy it."

For two years, Tom toyed with the idea of buying a home in Manila. He looked at several condominiums, from Essensa to Rockwell to Pacific Place to One Roxas Triangle. He explains, "I like Rockwell Center, I like the community, it’s very nice, but not so much the condominium units. For me, One Roxas has the best layout, security and design quality. For one, you have a private elevator, a private foyer. As both an architect and a homeowner, I like little details like that."

The building’s elevators open on both sides, but you have to be buzzed in from the unit to be able to press the floor and the "tower" you want to access. Residents use a laser key system that stops only at a specific floor, opening to his own private lobby. Household help and the utility personnel are also screened each time they enter and exit the building through "a biometric reader that scans their fingerprints to check if a match can be found."

When we step out of the elevator, we are momentarily taken aback by the glass doors. "This is it?" we ask, thinking it’s a corridor that leads to the units. But, no, this is Tom’s unit itself, looking like an entrance to an art gallery. Impy Pilapil’s stone sculpture lords over the foyer and sets the tone for the rest of the home.

The home bears traces of his love for the city that gave him success and the country he is trying to get to know all over again. He admits that when it came to choosing the artworks in his home, he didn’t know much about local artists, having been out of the country for so long. With the help of designer Budji Layug and Dinggay Reyes Espiritu, who manages his Philippine company, he chose modern artworks such as paintings by Ivan Acuña, Lito Carating, Nestor Vinluan and and National Artists HR Ocampo and Vicente Manansala.

"When I started, I didn’t know anything about Filipino artists. All I knew was that this would look good in a certain room. I got to know them only when I was doing the house. I just followed Budji and Dinggay’s advice."

The piece de resistance in the living room is an artwork by Robert Forti made of ceramic in bronze color. It is an astounding piece of wall sculpture – a series of uneven tube-like squares pieced together by hand and backed by solid wood.

"I saw it in a gallery in Soho and met the artist. I immediately liked his work and got two more for the foyer and the master bedroom – also in ceramic but in different colors and design – which are coming in two weeks. I wanted something different, young, new and modern."

The Forti piece wasn’t even supposed to be for his Manila home. It so happens that Tom is also redoing his apartment in New York and when he went around Soho with his interior designer, he saw the piece and decided to bring it to Manila.

For the furniture, Tom turned to Budji Layug. "Budji is a good dreamer," he says with a smile.

Budji’s furniture are at once subdued and imposing. They make a strong, contemporary statement with their clean lines and materials that fool the eye. While many of the furniture use leather, you won’t know this until you touch them. For instance, the high-backed dining room chairs look like rattan weave from afar, yet they are soft and supple; the chaise lounge frame and ottomans in the living room look like woven mats but they’re all leather, too. The furniture are oversized, which fits the space quite nicely.

Tom admits that the construction of the space took much longer than planned. The original contractor didn’t quite reach his standards and he had to redo some things with a different contractor. "I’m an architect," he says. "In New York, I’m into construction with my marble business. We restore historical places that take so much care in doing, we build new development, so I’m very particular about these things."

First, the wooden door came off to be replaced by clear glass doors. The wall of the powder room, with its Philippe Starck accessories inside, was replaced by frosted glass that gives the space lots of breathing space. A certain lightness of space.

In the living and dining rooms, the walls were torn down to create an open-plan space: A living room with extended seating to the left and the dining room to the right, sacrificing a closed-off den in favor of flexible and generously proportioned space. All through the length of one wall are glass windows, maximizing the views from the unit.

Budji and Tom’s collaboration has produced space that invites people to sit comfortably and relax. It is space that breathes with life and serenity: a sweet homecoming for a balikbayan.

Tom’s two children – Ivan Xerxes and Charlene Bianca – haven’t seen this unit yet as they live with their mother in New Jersey, but he’s excited to show them the place. In one of the kids’ bedroom is one of three jaw-dropping large-screen, super-slim TV sets. That’s one of his vices, Tom admits – expensive toys that grown men like to have, the kind of toys that purr in the garage.

Tom laughs and says that it is only here that he gets to enjoy driving his cars because in New York, "it’s easier to take a cab."

Tom Batac is one of those rare people who lived the American dream without having experienced much of its nightmares. His story, as most success stories go, is one of luck, opportunity and a lot of hard work – seven days a week.

"I used to have an apartment in the city that the company paid for, then I lost my job. My brother and sister would call me and say, ‘Just stay in my house, it’s an expensive apartment you have.’ That’s the Pinoy way, isn’t it? Surprisingly, I managed to keep my own apartment."

He had just finished his degree in architecture when he left Manila. He wasn’t able to practice here and in the US it seemed almost impossible to do so. So he found a job in a marble company where he worked from 1978 to 1992. He says he didn’t have any plans of starting his own company, but his employer went out of business.

"So I said, let me try."

He did and turned the company – now his own – around and hasn’t looked back since. When he was an employee, he was fourth in command in the office; today, he’s the top boss of about 150 employees. "It’s a good thing I enjoy my work and that I was there when the company closed down and had the guts to say, ‘Let me try it on my own.’ I started with nothing. Really. I had a good salary when I was employed and had a company car. But when the company closed, I didn’t have a choice, I had to start with no money of my own."

He put up a drafting table in his New York apartment and after a week, he got his first job. Today, Liberty Marble Inc. is well known in the construction business. For one, it was Tom’s company that restored Wintergarden in New York City, a glass-and-marble building in the vicinity of the World Trade complex, connecting Merrill Lynch and the American Express Building. "It’s such a beautiful garden with tropical trees inside. It’s one of the best loved places in New York."

When it was damaged in the 9/11 attacks, Liberty restored the marble flooring of this beloved NY landmark, earning for the company praises from trade publications such as Stone World.

Quite a number of his projects involve historical sites in the city and also hospitality buildings and corporate headquarters. Liberty did the marble lobby of the Ritz Carlton and Vista Hotel. The latter was the precursor of the Marriott Hotel, which was located between the two World Trade Center towers, which was damaged in the first attack in 1993 and, later, completely destroyed in 2001.

Tom says most of his projects are in New York and he likes that just fine. It’s a city that keeps him busy all year round and one that he’s grown to call home. "New York inspires me. I lived in Rhode Island for 14 years and it was a sort of conservative place. In New York, when I was just starting out there, I made a lot of friends immediately – more friends than I made in all those years in Rhode Island. We are all of different colors in New York, we are all from somewhere else, and we are all accepted there. It’s just like the song of Frank Sinatra, it’s a city that doesn’t sleep. You can walk the whole day and be amazed every minute. Each street has a different culture. Any cuisine you can think of, any design style – everything and everybody is there. Forget Paris, forget Milan."

Tom adds that when he started his own company, he thought it would be nice to show what he was doing abroad in the Philippines. So in 1996, he opened the Philippine office of Liberty Marble and the company’s been doing commercial buildings and condominiums, such as the lobby of One Roxas Triangle, among many other developments since.

Tom reflects on his journey from Pampanga to Manila to New York by saying, "I’m from a simple family. We’re eight in the family and we all managed to get college degrees. My mother sold fish and sometimes to augment my allowance, I’d sell empty bottles. Kids today are so lucky."

What’s his reaction to the many changes in Metro Manila? Has he seen the new developments? The restaurants in Greenbelt 3? He laughed and said, "I’d rather eat at Jollibee or at Ebun, the Kapampangan restaurant. Or better yet, at a ‘totobits’ joint." That’s Kapampangan slang for turo-turo. It’s a contraction of a phrase that literally means "dangling feet" (toto bitis), those kind of places where you sit on a wooden bench, perhaps by the railroad tracks or in the public market.

That’s how he is in New York, too, he says. He’d hold business meetings in expensive restaurants but would just partake of wine and salad because when he gets home, he likes nothing more but to eat nilagang itlog and kamatis.

Well, you certainly can take the Filipino out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the Filipino – no matter what his passport says.