THERE aren’t many streets in George Town, Penang – with open drains being a common sight – that make you stop in your tracks and take a good strong whiff. Unless you happen to be walking along Stewart Lane. In the old days, 55 Stewart Lane was a coffee roasting shop, and the aroma of coffee beans roasted in butter and sugar would assail the nostrils of anyone ambling past the corner shophouse. Although times have changed and the original Kim Guan coffee factory is no longer there, the smell of roasted coffee continues to linger, and so too does the heritage that the row of shophouses on this street represents.

55 Stewart Lane is now a trendy coffeehouse called Kopi Cine, and is one of six shophouses on that street that have since been turned into the Straits Collection – one of two newly opened boutique hotel enclaves in Penang that includes accommodation, retail outlets and cafes.

That house number 55 still has a coffee connection is a deliberate move by hotelier and active conservationist Narelle McMurtrie. Formerly a restaurateur, she first made waves when she turned Malay kampong houses in Langkawi into chi-chi boutique hotels called Bon Ton more than 15 years ago. She is also the woman behind the now defunct Bon Ton restaurant in Kuala Lumpur – a fixture on the tourist itinerary for its decent Asian fare served in an elegant colonial bungalow.

While conservation has always been her passion, Ms McMurtrie never really intended it to be a life-long goal. ‘None of this was planned … it kind of just happened,’ she says when trying to explain how she got involved in the Straits Collection project in Penang. She used to have a nonya house in Malacca, but as she wasn’t using it much, she sold it and bought a property in George Town four years ago, she recounts. Then, four shophouses in Armenian Street came up for sale – one of the enclaves with the highest heritage quotas in Penang, with its numerous old Chinese clan houses. She snapped them up. Later, another six on Stewart Lane, also known as ‘Ai Cheng Hang’ or ‘lover’s lane’ in Penang Hokkien, also became available. The two sets of properties are just a five-minute walk from each other and all are typical Chinese shophouses, built in the 1920s. ‘I knew I wanted to do accommodation of some sort, but I wasn’t sure yet how to work within the confines of the heritage guidelines and so on,’ she explains.

In the end, she spent about RM3.5 million on the Straits Collection – buying and converting the houses into 10 boutique residences (with one or two stylishly appointed rooms each), a reading room, two cafes and a retail shop. ‘That’s why it’s called the collection,’ she adds. Besides Kopi Cine, which blends old style Penang coffee with Italian brewing methods, there is also China Joe’s tea salon on Armenian Street, which combines a retail store selling Chinese bric-a-brac with a soon-to-be-opened tea shop.

Ms McMurtrie took the hands-on approach and did her own project management – from the plumbing to picking out the cushion covers. The shophouses were renovated but retain as much of the original look as possible. The result: spaces that look appealingly comfortable, with both antique-looking and contemporary Asian furniture, colourful carpets, mood lighting and modern ceramic ware. The style is modern Asian, and very much in the same vein as Bon Ton and Temple Tree – the latter being an amazing project of dismantling heritage houses throughout Malaysia and re-installing them in one large garden in Langkawi.

You’d think she traipses around the region for the furnishings, but she sources them all from one city: Kuala Lumpur. ‘I get them from a few stores in KL, and when guests ask, we give them our list. Just like we give guests recommendations on where to eat and shop in Langkawi. We’re quite open about these things,’ she says.

Ask her if she thinks of herself as a hotelier, and Ms McMurtrie isn’t too comfortable with the term yet. ‘I think that what we have are restaurants with rooms … people still know us as a restaurant,’ she states. ‘In fact, I started in retail at first, with a take-away deli, so I’ve always done food and retail,’ she explains. Bon Ton the restaurant first opened in Kuala Lumpur more than 20 years ago, before the one in Langkawi in 1994. The resort in Langkawi came later.

With her unique properties, and also the unusual way she runs the hotels (guests can rent the Armenian Street houses for long-term stays), Ms McMurtrie is defining the heritage boutique hotel trend in Malaysia. And there’s even a cause behind her business – which is to support her animal shelters. Next up is a shelter in Penang, like the one in Langkawi, declares the animal lover.

Does she have plans to open similar properties in Malacca and Singapore – to make it a real ‘Straits’ collection? ‘Not yet!’ she exclaims. Not when business is just brewing in Penang, one supposes, and she has to make sure she gets the blend and balance just right.

Source: Business Times, 16 Feb 2010

TAMPINES and Pasir Ris residents are fretting about new rental flats in their neighbourhood – and the whole affair has a sense of deja vu about it.

Two years ago, private residents in Serangoon Gardens threw a fit when they got wind of plans to locate a foreign worker dormitory there. Now, these HDB home owners are upset about new rental blocks they fear will block their breeze and devalue their homes.

It’s hard not to see the parallels. In the Serangoon Gardens’ case, the bogeyman was the drunken foreign worker cum molester. In Tampines, it’s the drug addict with three hungry children in tow.

One resident summed his fears thus: ‘Smokers and drinkers may gather at the void deck. Many families here have young children and teenagers. We don’t want them led astray.’

Living next to poor people, they reckon, will put them constantly on their guard in their comfortable neighbourhood.

One could be forgiven for thinking that rental HDB flats are full of layabouts, criminals and drunkards. The truth is many are elderly folk living on public assistance, as well as families with valid but low-income employment. And some are young couples trying to save up to buy a modest home of their own.

All tenant households earn not more than $1,500 a month. The HDB says it spread rental blocks across the island ‘to achieve a balanced social mix’. In other words, it tries to integrate rental flat residents with the rest of the home-owning population, so that the underclass don’t form enclaves.

There is good reason for that. Studies, such as those done by Northwestern University professor James Rosenbaum of low-income black families relocated from inner city homes in Chicago to predominantly middle-class suburbs, have found that such moves benefit the poor.

His team found that the Gautreaux Housing Relocation Project, which began in 1976, resulted in such movers being more likely to be employed. Mothers who were reluctant to get a job before because they needed to keep an eye on their kids became more open to seeking jobs when their living environment was safer. Their children were also more likely to go on to university and find full-time jobs at higher wages than those who remained in the inner city.

In Singapore, rental flat residents who live among communities of home owners stand to gain from a more balanced living environment. This is not to say that all families who live in flats they own are better off or better adjusted. Rather, living together with families across a wide spectrum of income groups will prevent both sides from acquiring a distorted sense of reality.

This point is particularly relevant to middle-income heartlanders who worry their children will grow up too coddled to understand the real world. Here’s the thing: Poverty need not be something abstract, learnt from textbooks or school excursions, if children can get some sense of what it’s like to be poor from the kids they interact with in the neighbourhood playground.

They will learn not to despise or fear the poor. They will learn, hopefully, to approach them with modesty and compassion, because they understand that hardship can strike anyone at any point in their lives.

The fortunate thing about this whole affair is that the Government looks unlikely to budge from building the rental blocks. The downturn has swelled the ranks of applicants and prompted the HDB to increase its stock of rental flats by 17 per cent to 50,000 in 2012. That said, one wonders what concessions might be made, such as the separate road entrances in the Serangoon Gardens’ case.

It is no secret that public housing in Singapore functions also as a sophisticated form of social engineering. Housing policies help integrate the races, bond families across generations, and encourage marriage to boot.

As society changes, and new forms of social divides appear, the authorities will constantly tweak the formula further to see how they can bridge the social divisions. For instance, last month Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew spoke about having separate ethnic quotas for permanent residents to prevent them from forming enclaves.

The current quotas limit the proportions of Chinese, Malay, Indians and other minority races in each block and precinct. But these quotas do not affect new immigrants, who have been buying up resale flats near one another. Hence the current review of the ethnic integration policy.

Could rental flats become the next area for social experiments? After all, HDB already has a policy of mixing different flat types in each block to encourage interactions across different income groups.

In a launch early this month, a batch of 750 upcoming flats called Punggol Crest comprised two-room, three-room and four-room units, while another 784 units called Treegrove@Woodlands offered studio apartments for the elderly together with three- and four-roomers.

Given the high number of flats being launched these days, wouldn’t it make sense for the HDB to build new rental flats within the same block as sold flats?

The average heartlander who may baulk at living next to a rental block is likely to be less resistant to the idea of living with one or two families on subsidised rental just down his corridor.

In fact, he might not be able to tell that they are subsidised tenants, and might interact with them without any preconceived notions.

Done sensibly, this merging of rental and sold flats can blur boundaries, reduce stigma and bridge differences.

Given Singapore’s rising income gap, such a policy could prove to be as socially beneficial as the ethnic integration policy.

Source: Straits Times, 16 Feb 2010