Heritage buffs hope to re-energize Kota
Damar Harsanto, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta
Winda Malika Siregar, 25, no longer invites her friends to visit old buildings in downtown Kota, after most of them have bluntly refused the idea.
"They mentioned the chronic traffic congestion, the insecure situation and bad odor of the stagnant, sewage-polluted river as their reasons for not coming to Kota," complained the 25-year-old resident of the upmarket Kebayoran Baru residential area in South Jakarta.
"Imagine if Kota were clean and secure and most of heritage sites, such as buildings, here were fully restored, with some converted into cafes. This area would become a favored hang-out place for the young," she added.
Many Jakartans, including Winda, are dreaming of a day when Kota can return to its role as the center of business, sleek residences, cultural activities and even tourism, as it was during the Dutch administration's heyday.
A group of heritage enthusiasts, who call themselves Jakarta Old Town-Kotaku (JOK), have teamed up to revitalize the historical area.
Kota is currently notorious for its poorly maintained antique buildings, traffic nightmares, recurrent flooding, on-street parking problems, ubiquitous street vendors clogging the roads and the main river polluted with waste.
"After five years of preparations, we are ready to see our dream materialize (to revitalize the old town)," said JOK deputy chairwoman Shanti Lasminingsih Poesposoetjipto.
She said that JOK had garnered support from officials in the Jakarta administration, the owners of the old buildings, artists, architects, businesspeople and heritage buffs to work together to make the program a success.
JOK will officially mark the launching of a program to revitalize the old town in a ceremony to be held on Sunday, Dec. 12 at the original Bank Indonesia (BI) building adjacent to Kota railway station.
The ceremony, with foreign ambassadors, city officials and heritage lovers on hand, will also be enlivened by the Vienna Chamber Orchestra.
During the ceremony, Jakarta Governor Sutiyoso is scheduled to announce a new group of civil servants, who will regularly ply the Kali Besar river on bamboo rafts to clean it up.
The JOK chairwoman Miranda S. Goeltom, who is also BI's Senior Deputy Governor, emphasized that the river clean-up program would be funded by a Rp 100 million donation from Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC), and would hopefully improve the environmental quality in the area.
"The effort to revive Kota will be meaningless without improving the existing poor conditions of the environment such as the sewage system, security, the parking system and water supply. Those factors are necessary to attract people to come here and open businesses," she said.
BI, which owns one of the heritage buildings in the area, will restore its colonial-era building and convert it into a museum, while some parts of the building will be converted into a fine dining restaurant and cafe.
"Hopefully, by mid 2007, the new museum will be operational and open to the public," an official with BI, Ishadhi, said.
Another owner of one of the older buildings, Magdalene Liela Ubaidi, said owners were not interested in financial support from the administration because there were more pressing programs such as poverty and education that should be prioritized.
"All we need is the administration's support in terms of policy in the revitalization program. And, let the rest, like financing, be carried out by other (private) parties," she said.