Agdao Public Market

A Market That Feels Personal

I grew up in Agdao, so this market is not only a place to buy groceries for me. It is part of my childhood, my family's livelihood, and a big piece of how I understand the neighborhood.

Our sari-sari store has been running for more than 15 years, and almost everything we sell, from fish and chicken to cigarettes, bread, rice, cooking oil, charcoal, and butane, has passed through this market in one way or another. My mother has been waking up at 3 a.m., sometimes 4 a.m., sometimes as late as 5 a.m., just to get there early and get the freshest stock before everything gets picked over.

Because of that, the renovation of Agdao Public Market felt personal. It was not just a city project to look at from outside.

It changed a place my family has depended on for years. Fresh goods buying and sari-sari store restocking can begin around 3 a.m. to 5 a.m.

The Old Market and the New Building

The old market worked because the people made it work, not because the building was in good shape. The floors were often wet, stagnant water collected in certain spots, and rain could leak through the ceiling.

Regular buyers and vendors adapted to it for years, but the place clearly needed a real upgrade. Agdao Public Market is now a two story modern structure with an escalator and an elevator, which still feels surprising to see in a neighborhood public market.

The new Agdao Public Market is genuinely better than the old leaking building many of us grew up with. It is cleaner, brighter, and more organized than the old cramped and leaking space. The blocks around the market work as a neighborhood commercial district.

The Part That Still Feels Unfinished

But the upgrade also has a harder side. Rental fees went up, and smaller store owners have had a difficult time adjusting.

As of May 2026, most second floor stalls were still closed. You can go upstairs and feel how much of the floor is waiting to be occupied. The City Treasurer's Office Agdao Satellite is active there, though, and people use it for fines, illegal parking tickets, and tax declaration transactions.

Where the Market Still Lives

The ground floor still carries the real market energy. That is where buyers, vendors, and store owners keep the place alive.

Around the market, Agdao also works like a compact errand district: pharmacies, Jollibee, Warehouse, Novo, the barangay hall, salons, barbershops, clinics, eye centers, ukay-ukay stalls, convenience stores, and flower shops all sit within the same everyday circuit. The area includes pharmacies such as Mercury Drug, Rose Pharmacy, Watsons, and others, plus groceries, ukay-ukay, clinics, barbershops, salons, flower shops, and convenience stores. Mercury Drug Agdao sits at N. Torres Street corner Lapu-Lapu Street.

The 3 a.m. Memory

One memory that still stays with me is joining my mother on an early restocking run around three years ago. At almost 4 a.m., the market was already awake.

Vendors had already bathed, traveled, opened, arranged products, and started selling. That hit me differently because at that point in my life, 3 or 4 a.m. usually meant movies, series, or online games.

Seeing other people already working at full speed at that same hour gave me a different respect for the people who run markets and the families who depend on them. My mother has done that run for more than 15 years.

That still gets me. But a market is only as alive as the vendors inside it.

The second floor is a reminder that modernization is only the first step. The real challenge is making sure the people who built the market's reputation over decades can still afford to stay in it.

Financed under the Agriculture and Fisheries Modernization Act, the total construction cost was estimated between 740 and 850 million pesos. The ground floor of the new building handles fish, meat, and poultry with a cold storage section.

Groceries and variety goods were placed on the second floor, while vegetables, fruit, rice, corn, and the food court sit in the older adjacent building. The market runs roughly from 4 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily, though the wet market and the predawn restocking start earlier, before sunrise.