By Sheridan Mahavera.

TEN years ago, hotelier Tan Choo Aun was played out by his former landlords. He was forced to unceremoniously leave a thriving inn he had put his heart and soul into, and sell it off almost lock, stock and barrel to them.

But if not for that episode, Tan would most probably not be the proud owner of three well-known budget hotels on Lebuh Muntri, a street lined with ancient shophouses at the heart of historical George Town.

“I was lucky to have bought this land 10 years ago,” says the 40-something owner of Star Lodge hotel. “In this area, now, I don’t think you can get anything for less than half a million.”

Since its 2008 listing, there has been renewed interest from property developers and the hospitality industry in this north eastern-most tip of the Penang island. The heritage zone is essentially a triangle of land measuring about 259ha that juts out from the island, and which contains the state’s most storied monuments.

The homely feel of the zone’s winding streets has been well preserved. Going down them — with rustic, Anglo-Indian style shophouses on both sides — is like going back to a time when the world was unhurried, and a bowl of noodles was still five sen. Some of the mouldy shoplots have been given a fresh coat of paint, while pedestrian pavements have been added to a number of famous streets.

Yet not everyone who lives in or has a business in these shoplots is enthusiastic about the heritage listing. Though it has brought in prestigious developers to build boutique hotels and cafes, it has also displaced whole generations of families and traders who had once called the many “lebuhs” of George Town, home.

And beneath the currents sweeping through the heritage zone are gripes about the changing demographics of these areas, as natives are gradually pushed out by immigrants brought in by the new businesses.

There is also the ultimate question of what the value is in preserving old buildings, when the people and activities in them that gave them their character are long gone, only to be replaced by touristy kitsch and shops selling knockoff T-shirts?

LIVING WITH AND IN THE PAST

Around the same time Tan bought the land for his hotels, the Penang State Assembly repealed an important pre-Merdeka law — the Rent Control Act. The Act was introduced in the late 1940s when houses in Penang were scarce, after being damaged in World War II. It essentially made it hard for building owners to evict their tenants, and put a cap on rental rates.

By repealing the law, the state fired up interest among developers to buy up choice pieces of real estate in George Town, to turn into malls, hotels, pubs or restaurants.

Tawfik Sulaiman was one of those who lost out when the Act was repealed. He claims to have been “chased out” of the shop he and his family had occupied for 70 years along Lebuh Acheh by the building’s new owner.

He now rents a small lot along a row of shops owned by the Lim Kongsi, also on Lebuh Acheh. The street, however, has changed ever since the authorities were preparing the heritage zone, he says.

“The whole area was famed for its printing presses and its Islamic bookstores. Hajj pilgrims from all over the region used to come to Lebuh Acheh to make preparations and eventually sail to Mecca.

“Meriah dulu (it was lively then). Now look at it. It’s deserted. They should change the name from Lebuh Acheh to ‘Lebuh Ghost’,” says Tawfik, sweeping his arm towards the refurbished but vacant shops that line the street.

Tawfik believes the decline of Lebuh Acheh, which had been a part of a 200-year-old enclave filled with settlers from the eponymous Northern Sumatran province, started when the authorities changed it into a one-way street.

The street itself has been narrowed by a new pedestrian walkway, making it hard for vehicles to park next to the shops.

“I don’t believe in all this ‘heritage’ talk. What is the point of heritage when an area does not resemble how it looked like in the past?”

Another resident, who lives several doors down, has a similar but more disquieting view.

“How can you call Lebuh Acheh — a Malay enclave — if it is filled with Indian Muslims? In the past yes, the community was majority Malay, but now it isn’t.”

A short walk away is Jalan Masjid Kapitan Keling. It is the site of one of Malaysia’s oldest mosques and the boulevard it is on has a new pedestrian walkway. Traffic on the street is being diverted from its original flow to make it easier to walk along, and this has miffed Nurjahan Mohamed Ismail.

Nurjahan’s 87-year-old jewellery store was one of the first to open along the road that is now chock full of them.

“The government has to do something to develop the area and not just turn them into historic buildings. I understand the importance of heritage but we must do something to help modernise business in the area,” she says.

Heritage status has not helped her store get more customers or raise its profile. She complains about how banks would not give her loans to expand her business. But she admits that having a shop with a lot of history does have its good points.

“Customers are attracted to the fact that we have been around since 1923 so they feel that our wares have quality. They also feel that here, we don’t ‘tekan harga’ (gouge prices) and our service is good.”

SAVED BY THE PAST

Yet for all the grumbling about the heritage listing, it has prevented some communities from being erased from the map.

Around the Lebuh Acheh mosque is a small square of four traditional Malay kampung houses that have impossibly survived amidst all the brick and mortar.

The houses, claimed one of the owners, Mohammad Yahya, 70, were among the first to be built when the community was founded in 1792 by Tunku Syed Hussain Idid. Yet, that has not stopped some people from trying to demolish them and the mosque.

Mohamad says the land the mosque and the compound where the houses sit on was taken over by a Penang Islamic affairs body that wanted the occupants to leave in 2002.

“We went to organisations like the Penang Heritage Trust and they helped us fight the order. The body had even brought in people into the mosque who were not from the area but who claimed they were. These strangers were telling the media and the government that they were okay with moving.”

Mohamad and the other three families’ resistance, as well as the mosque’s fame, helped stay the evictors until the 2008 listing. “Now, it is difficult to chase us out or to develop this place,” says Mohamad.

Being in the heritage zone helps when it comes to preserving structures and drawing visitors in, though for now, there are just as many brightened up but hollow buildings as there are cafes, hotels and houses.

For buildings such as Suffolk House that lie outside of the zone and is not easily accessible, conservationists have to rely on more creative ways to get people to come and, most importantly, to make the building relevant to island’s residents.

The romantic Georgian mansion is tucked behind a clutch of bungalows near the Penang Methodist Boys School along Jalan Air Itam and is referred to by historians as “the first Great House of Penang.”

The mansion was built in the early 1800s on a pepper estate owned by Penang’s founder, Francis Light. Penang’s governors after Light used it for important functions, but it fell into disrepair in the 1960s and was abandoned in 1974.

Badan Warisan Malaysia (BWM), which manages the house, did not just turn it into a museum. The mansion’s old dining area is now a restaurant operated by the people behind two of the island’s more well-known eateries.

Its unique halls, some of the bedrooms and the upstairs ballroom have been retro-fitted into spaces for corporate and social functions and weddings.

“We’ve held functions and still get reservations for functions and weddings. The state has also been very active in promoting us,” says Lim Ee Lin of BWM. To maximise the visitor experience, functions are capped at 200 people.

The modern fixtures blend in unobtrusively with the house’s old-world feel. The upstairs ballroom is ensconced in a sheath of clear Plexiglas for air-conditioning but you can still get a wide view of the mansion’s gardens.

“The whole idea is to use the building itself (for events) and the fact that you can walk through it is a testament to its restoration.

“You have to bring life in and make the site a living venue for the public,” says Ee Lin.

CAFES ARE BETTER THAN WRECKING BALLS

Datuk Lee Kah Choon fondly remembers the days when he used to trawl the book shops along Lebuh Carnovan as a boy and how, interestingly, there were coffin shops in between the book shops.

“They’re not there anymore of course because the business models of the book shops and the funeral parlours have changed. These days, who wants to open a shop next to a coffin shop?”

He understands the difficulty in trying to balance the need for authenticity with the need to update these spaces and making them viable in an age of point-and-click purchasing and mega-shopping malls.

“We have set up guidelines to steer development in these areas so that people can open businesses and yet still maintain the building’s character,” says Lee, the chairman of InvestPenang.

Trying to recreate the past in these present conditions is almost impossible, he says, because of how certain things in the past have organically grown into what we know them as now.

To get things back to the way they were, even though the circumstances have changed, would also be inauthentic.

“Some people say we should bring craftsmen back to the shops they used to occupy. But nowadays people who make those crafts have all moved into light industrial estates. You cannot recreate the past and force it to live in the present.

“So what’s wrong with having an Internet cafe in a heritage building?” he argues, because that would be better than just tearing the building down.

** Reproduced with permission. This article first appeared in the March 26, 2010 issue of The Malaysian Insider.

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