A place to escape traffic jams
A. Junaidi, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
A girl, who lives in Cikarang, West Java, called her boyfriend asking her to pick her up at the Plaza Semanggi.
"Why Plaza Semanggi?" her boyfriend, who lives in Depok, West Java, asked.
"Because it's easy to reach. My bus will make a stop in front of Polda (City Police Headquarters) and I need only to walk a bit from the bus stop to the plaza," she said.
The conversation between my colleague and his girlfriend well describes how many people now favor the Plaza Semanggi as a meeting place given its strategic location in the center of the city and the numerous bus lines passing the streets near the building.
In fact, hundreds or maybe thousands of people are seen visiting the plaza everyday to inspect or buy items displayed in the dozens of shops, or to enjoy the food and drink offered in many cafes and restaurants there.
The plaza, which some Jakartans refer to as "Plangi", is located in one corner of Jakarta's famous Semanggi cloverleaf. It is adjacent to the Atmadjaja Catholic University, with one of the buildings situated on Jl. Sudirman and the other end on Jl. Gatot Subroto, one of the busiest streets in the capital.
The fact that the plaza seems crowded almost every day is not just because it has become a favorite rendezvous point for many people. The traffic jams that congest the area near the plaza might also be a factor behind the large crowds packing the plaza.
I clearly saw the traffic jam while eating a bowl of meatballs at a bakso corner at the food court located in the third floor of the plaza.
I also saw many people wearing ties (probably employees of offices along Jl. Sudirman and Gatot Subroto) and young people (probably students of the Atmajaya University) come to the building or walk along the corridors inside the building.
The plaza's foot court offers pretty much the same menu as the offered in other shopping centers, such as Plaza Senayan or Plaza Indonesia: fast food, western and Japanese food, as well as local cuisine.
The prices as also similar, ranging from Rp 10,000 (about US$1) to Rp 50,000 per portion.
"I'm eating here because I can take a rest while waiting for the traffic jams to wind down before going home," Henry, an employee of a company on Jl. Sudirman who resides in South Jakarta, said that evening.
While enjoying a cup of hot cappuccino and a bowl of French fries, he looked through the cafe's window down to the packed Metromini buses and private cars crawling along the city's main thoroughfares. Hundreds or thousands of people were waiting for buses.
Traffic jams are a chronic problem of the city. Over the years, several governors and transportation experts have taken turns to discuss the problem, but thus far no real solution has been found to the problem.
Some property analysts had earlier said that the development of the 17-story plaza on a 45,000-square-meter plot of land owned by the Indonesian Veterans Legion would fail given the chronic traffic jams in the surrounding area.
Despite the warning, the developer, PT. Primatama Nusa Indah, which is a subsidiary of PT Sumarecon Agung, the business group which has successfully developed Kelapa Gading area in North Jakarta, went ahead with the project. The plaza opened last year.
Now, people who were initially critical of the project, may have started to realize that the traffic jam in the area has turned out to be an opportunity rather than a threat.
The developer not only built a food court to attract people who were sick of the traffic jams, but has also provided the Cafe Walk on the ground floor for dozens of cafes, local and franchised cafes.
Rather than demolishing the Balai Sarbini building, which was the original building on the plot, the developer has renovated the facilities and it now has become one of the best venues for musical performances. The Indonesian Idol program is aired live from the hall weekly.