KUALA LUMPUR: All that is needed to kick-start the restoration of the decaying buildings on Jalan Raja here is RM10 million.
Conservationist Steven Thang estimated that it would take RM200 million to take the 109-year-old FMS Survey Office, the former Supreme Court and the equally old City Hall building to their heyday.
He, however, stressed that the funding need not be given all at once and could be sourced from their custodian, the Tourism, Arts and Culture Ministry.
“If you wait for RM200 million it will never materialise, but spreading RM10 million in stages through yearly budgets of RM10 to RM20 million over the next decade or two means priorities can be set and urgent work done.”
Thang said the heritage quarter, which generates much tourist revenue, was one of the most photographed spots in the nation’s capital.
The buildings have been left vacant for over 10 years since the courts moved to Jalan Duta.
The architect, who had been recruited to oversee conservation works at the old Supreme Court in 2017 involving the River of Life (RoL) project, was enlisted by the New Straits Times to provide his analysis of the buildings.
“The roofing of the old FMS Survey Office and the old City Hall needs urgent repairs. It would cost between RM10 million and RM15 million and it needs to be fixed alongside the two domes on Jalan Tun Perak. If nothing is done to the roofs, they can collapse in the next five years or earlier.
“Their timber floor will give way and they will just become among those buildings where the floor and roof are gone while the walls remain.
“If the two domes fall off, the identity of the buildings will be gone,” he said, adding that the sum was to fix the roof, restore the domes and plug its leaks.
He said the exterior walls, plastering and the brickwork of the Supreme Court and the old FMS Survey Office needed fast action.
“The exposed, mix-and-match bricks are flaking off because they are not tended to. The Tourism Ministry needs to rope in experts for extensive research on how many bricks can be reused and what needs replacing.
“This requires lab tests to gauge the bricks’ strength. It is time-consuming process as it involves manual labour.”
Thang said in the past, the building’s walls had been painted over when Bollywood production crews were allowed to use the shared courtyard of the court and survey office.
He, however, said building surveys marked the icons as structurally sound.
A recent check found that City Hall was doing some work on its old headquarters, which currently houses Panggung Bandaraya. It had been painting and reinforcing the building, which it has been allowed to operate for some years now.
However, it is not yet established whether the job is rehabilitative or just a facelift.
On the conservation job he undertook earlier, Thang said the lead consultant did the mapping and preliminary investigation into problems affecting the buildings.
In three months, they had barely managed to remove all the beams, concrete columns, slabs and other structures, which had been added at the old court by the Public Works Department previously before moving on to the old FMS Survey Office, when the allocation was withdrawn.
Last year, a news portal quoted an architect as saying that the government ended a RM350 million contract to renovate the three vacant buildings and the lower floors of Bangunan Sultan Abdul Samad.
The exercise was believed to have been part of the government’s move to shave off non-essential operating expenses, such as consultation, refurbishment, computer upgrades and promotional events.
Refurbishment of the clock tower building’s roof upper floors and the old post office had, however, been completed under the first phase of the project.
Thang, however, said the old Supreme Court and the FMS Survey Office buildings had been left as what his team did. At that time, algae and wet rot, plants, creepers and trees were already fixtures of the roofs of the buildings. The worst affected is the old FMS Survey Office building. A recent check confirmed Thang’s observation. An entire tree was growing within its air-well.
Merdeka Precinct Conservation Office?
Thang pitched for a conservation office at one of the vacant buildings to look after the precinct, adding that it should be sustained with a capital injection of RM1 million and an annual budget of RM600,000.
The Malaysian Institute of Architects’ heritage and conservation committee head said the National Heritage Department operating next door at Bangunan Sultan Abdul Samad could assign registered conservators to it.
“In Borobudur, Indonesia, there is a conservation office to look after the temple complex. It has a lab and everything.
“The scheduled cleaning or maintenance is on a cyclic basis, they clean stone by stone, going all around the candi (temple) over a period of five years and then they restart.”
Thang, who was trained in the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation World Heritage site, said the RM10 million budget was for conservation alone. This restricted it to urgent repairs and restoration, excluding it from maintenance or daily cleaning.
He said once the three buildings were restored, the remainder of the RM200 million could be used for Bangunan Sultan Abdul Samad.
RoL features killing Bangunan Sultan Abdul Samad
The RoL beautification works, which brought more traffic to the area by way of sunken gardens and pools at the quarter, had exposed the Mughal eclectic “jewels” to more ruin.
Thang said the water mist from the RoL’s fountains was killing the buildings slowly.
“As it is, conservation jobs there have missed things. And then you have this tourism gimmick which is setting conservators further back.
“Elsewhere in the world, people are reducing humidity to (preserve) heritage buildings and here you are increasing it. The mist to the buildings is like feeding white rice to a diabetic person; atomised and more easily absorbed than rain.”
Numerous floods over the years, plus leaving the buildings vacant and locked up without ventilation also placed them in peril. The gradual raising of Jalan Raja to 0.9m has accelerated the process.
Thang claimed the project was “not a conservation effort”, but was instead, a gimmick that removed the “authenticity of time” to the vistas from Leboh Pasar, which had endured for a century.
Meanwhile, International Council on Monuments and Sites Malaysia (ICOMOS) assistant honorary secretary Mariana Isa asked why the authorities had allowed the buildings to deteriorate when the quarter generated revenue.
“These buildings are our Taj Mahal or Al-Hambra. It’s not just maintenance and repairs; the minute it is unoccupied there is no one to maintain it. There’s no air conditioning to drain out the water and there is no one to open windows for ventilation or clean it.
“How can you talk about heritage and conservation or inculcate them in our education system when these buildings are no longer around? Are you going to tell the children that here lies
the old FMS Survey Office building, which once was and is no more?”
She said the solution was conserving, then activating the buildings by opening them to the public and integrating them with the river public transport, cycle lanes and pedestrianisation as part of the overall place-making policy.
Tax breaks a must
ICOMOS Malaysia president Datuk Ar Hajeedar Abdul Majid said the buildings were highly coveted, and that even non-profit organisations were keen on
running them.
“These buildings can be used for events and tourism.”
He, however, said the National Heritage Act stated that the responsibility of caring for a building, which is gazetted as a heritage building, lies with the owners.
As such, the government should issue tax breaks to private owners to incentivise the restoration of heritage buildings.
“In Singapore, there is a 250 per cent to 300 per cent tax break for donations, which can be used for conservation. However, ours is limited to 10 per cent (of chargeable income). This is the reason why everyone in Singapore is passionate about restoration because there is money there.”
Asked if this could lead to abuse, he said the National Heritage Act was specific in that restoration work should be undertaken under its conditions.
“If it is a gazetted heritage building, you have to restore it to the original design and structures, but you can change its use. This has to be verified and supervised by a registered conservator. You can’t just give a bill for RM1 million and it’s approved.”
Hajeedar said among the key items he had advocated during his tenure as the National Heritage Council Committee chair was a 100 per cent tax break for the restoration of such buildings.
The proposal, documented in a cabinet paper, was rejected.
Meanwhile, Tourism, Arts and Culture Minister Datuk Mohamaddin Ketapi told the New Straits Times he was agreeable to surrendering the custodianship or the activation of the three buildings at the junction of Jalan Raja and Jalan Tun Perak to the Federal Territories Ministry.
He gave an assurance that their façade and internal architecture would not be compromised and that the National Heritage Department would oversee work on the buildings.
The FT Ministry had recently submitted a bid to the Federal Land Commissioner to operate the buildings, including Bangunan Sultan Abdul Samad.