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Main Penang NGOs express alarm over PGCC

Anil Netto

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15 Sep 2007

If Patrick Lim and Equine Capital think it is going to be smooth sailing after the Prime Minister announced that approvals for the PGCC would be fast-tracked, they had better think again.

This morning, half a dozen of the main Penang NGOs came together to express their stand against the development of the PGCC at a packed press conference held at the CAP office. Also present was a cameraman (the logo on the camera said ntv7, but I am not so sure) who meticulously videotaped the proceedings. (Let’s see what comes out on ntv7 tonight. I am not holding my breath.)

Present were representatives from CAP, Penang Heritage Trust, Malaysian Nature Society, Sahabat Alam Malaysia, Cepat, and Aliran as well as other concerned Penangites.

The site of the project – the present Turf Club – was originally given by the government for a nominal sum and was zoned as ‘Open Space’. This was changed very recently to ‘Mixed Development’, even though public opinion was unanimously against it (judging from the submissions sent in by the public during the 2007 Structure Plan exercise), the NGOS said in a joint media statement.

“By doing so, the State has acted arbitrarily and sacrificed the interests of the community to a group of developers,” they said.

The NGO representatives expressed particular displeasure over the fact that the project is being steamed-rolled through and imposed from the top-down without full and open public consultation.

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What Patrick Lim didn’t show us: The missing 35 towers

Anil Netto

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14 Sep 2007

16

Holy shmoly! What the…

So PGCC master planner Nasrine Seraji claims I misquoted her and took her comments out of context. She was reported as saying that those comments were made four years ago and that no slides or pictures were shown on my blog post, which she claims was also not in the context of her conference.

But those comments were published by Canada.com last November, less than a year ago. Take a look at my original post here, where you can also find the link to her full original Canada.com interview (which doesn’t contain any pictures and slides either) and then you decide if I misquoted her and put her views out of context.

You want to talk about not giving the full picture and putting things out of context? Patrick Lim, Fox Communication and the mainstream media have been misleading the public by telling us only about the “iconic” crooked twin towers. (One of them is 66 storeys high by the way, almost similar to Komtar, that ugly protrusion in the centre of George Town.)

They have not shown the public what the other 35 towers on the site would look like. (Yes, I have recounted – there will be 37 towers in all, almost all of them over 40 storeys high.) The above view (which is actually a cut-out model done to scale on the actual plan – minus the Fox gloss) is what my late grandma and my late dad will see from Batu Gantong. (The crooked towers are at the top left and Scotland Road is on the right at the bottom.) Not a pretty sight.

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Towers rattle and shake after “iconic” towers’ masterplan launched

Anil Netto

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13 Sep 2007

2

When I requested my late dad and my late grandma a couple of days ago to watch over the green spaces surrounding their final resting place at the Bukit Gantong columbarium, neighbouring the proposed Penang Global City Centre, and to ask God to preserve the environment there for future generations, I wasn’t expecting anything earthshaking.

What a day to launch the masterplan of those “iconic” PGCC towers! (Wonder why they can’t say the word “towers” without adding the adjective “iconic” before it. Don’t they have any other word?)

Hours after the launch on 12 Sept, we had an 8.4 earthquake off nearby Sumatra, a tsunami alert, and people fleeing from high-rise buildings.

Too bad for Patrick Lim and Fox Communication that news of the quake and the tsunami alert shoved aside reports of the PGCC launch from the front pages of the newspapers yesterday. There are some things that even a PR firm can’t anticipate or handle.

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The mothership is landing…

Anil Netto

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11 Sep 2007

5

And so Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi launches the masterplan for Patrick Lim’s RM25 billion Penang Global City Centre project on 12 Sept.

They say a picture paints a thousand words. Have a look at these graphics visualising the PGCC, which I am reproducing here from architect firm Asymptote’s website in the public interest

I don’t know about you, but it looks like a soulless alien colony to me – as if a mothership from a distant galaxy has docked at the Turf Club land!

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Architect Nasrine Seraji exposes PGCC developers’ greed

Anil Netto

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10 Sep 2007

7

The developers of the RM25 billion Penang Global City Centre (PGCC) project have been telling us how green and carbon-free their project is going to be.

But what they didn’t tell us is they actually wanted to cram in as much as they could into the Turf Club land to maximise profits. In fact, they wanted a density that would have made it twice the density of Hong Kong!

Somehow, the PGCC’s Teheran-born architect, Nasrine Seraji, managed to convince the developers that no one would want to live there if they went ahead with their original plan.

Even so, it looks like the PGCC could end up with 33 tower blocks of over 40 storeys each. That is still massive.

And isn’t there going to be any social housing – low and low-medium cost housing – in the Turf Club site itself?

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RM25 billion PGCC: 33 tower blocks, over 40 storeys each

Anil Netto

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8 Sep 2007

1

It’s a RM25 billion whopper: about 33 tower blocks, each over 40 storeys high on the land being used by the Penang Turf Club. Imagine that!

And it looks like two different meetings on the Penang Global City Centre (PGCC) project are going to be held at two posh venues on Monday, 10 September – one at The Mansion and the other at the Penang Sports Club.

I now gather that the meeting at the Penang Sports Club was requested by the Jesselton Residents Association, which is concerned about this mega project on the doorstep of their peaceful and tranquil neighbourhood. Apparently, the developers requested that only three reps attend the meeting but the Jesselton Residents Association asked for 10.

The meeting at the Mansion will be a briefing on the PGCC on behalf of the developer (Abad Naluri) by Equine Capital executive chairman Patrick Lim (who is said by some to be the most influential businessman in Malaysia). The target audience: activists and performing arts people. Let’s see how many people actually turn up. I believe activists from the main Penang-based NGOs are boycotting the event; I am not sure about the performing arts folk though.

This briefing is being arranged by the Fox Communication people in Penang, K Y Pung, The Star’s former regional associate editor, and Mohd Tajudin, former journalist of theSun.

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Timber firms to receive soft loans a.k.a. subsidies

Anil Netto

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7 Sep 2007

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Timber firms are set to receive millions of ringgit in soft loans from the government under a “reforestation” programme.

In this article for IPS, I discussed two questions:

Why should profitable timber firms receive soft loans, which in effect are subsidies?
Is this really a reforestation programme or will such commercial tree plantations actually cause the deforestation of logged-over (but still viable) rainforests?

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Fox makes its move

Anil Netto

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6 Sep 2007

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Not making much headway with the Penang-based NGOs, the Fox Communication/Equine people have now trained their sights on the Jesselton Residents Association, neighbouring the Turf Club. The latest I hear is that this meeting will be held on 10 September at the Penang Sports Club nearby – two days before the official launch of the Penang Global City Centre mega project on the Turf Club land.

This means the idea to hold the meeting at “The Mansion” has probably been dropped. What to do, their original invitees don’t want to turn up. Update: Now I hear they are targeting the performing arts people and trying to woo them with the proposed performing arts centre in the PGCC. And they are still trying to round up activists to attend the Mansion meeting.

But hey, the Penang Sports Club is still pretty exclusive. Members – and their guests – only.

Apparently, they want to limit the meeting to 10 reps from the resident association. Maybe they are worried the public might turn up and start shouting at them.

But if Fox/Equine think its going to be smooth sailing with the residents association, they have another thing coming. Jesselton Heights is a tranquil, lush green upper-middle-class neighbourhood in Penang – perhaps equivalent to Damansara in KL (though I am not sure what that is like these days!).

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A phone call from Fox

Anil Netto

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4 Sep 2007

2

This is no rumour.

I was reading an article by Raja Petra of Malaysia Today about Abdullah Badawi, Patrick Lim and rumours that someone had forwarded to me – when suddenly, the phone rang.

It was a guy, Tajudin, from Fox Communication.

Fox is the firm handling the PR for Patrick Lim’s Penang Global City Centre mega project. Lim is of course the executive chairman of Equine Capital, which is also involved in another project on mainland Penang – the 450-acre mixed residential and commercial development in Batu Kawan known as the Crescentia project. Crescentia, close to where the proposed second bridge is located, has an estimated gross development value of RM860 million. We are talking big bucks here.

Anyway back to the PGCC project. We are talking even bigger bucks here.

Tajudin was under the impression that I was the one coordinating on the NGO side the meeting between activists and the PGCC developers, which Lim wants to address on 10 Sept, just two days before the official project launch.

Whatever gave Tajudin that idea?

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Unspinning Patrick Lim’s spin on his Penang mega project

Anil Netto

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3 Sep 2007

5

So just as my public relations guru (PR Guru) friend predicted, the spin is out for the Penang Global City Centre (PGCC) project on that sprawling green lung (and prime land) that used to be the Penang Turf Club.

The Star today reports Equine executive chairman Patrick Lim (widely known as “Patrick Badawi”) highlighting two aspects of the project, which will be officially launched on 12 September 2007:

Two new flyovers that Equine associate Abad Naluri will build to connect the PGCC to the Penang Outer Ring Road (another controversial project); and

The green credentials of the PGCC – 40 per cent of PGCC to be allocated to “green and open spaces”, carbon-free city, blah, blah, blah

It is no coincidence that these two aspects have been highlighted. They are obviously aimed at countering the concerns of Penang-based NGOs, which are opposed to the project because of its dire implications for the traffic (Scotland Road on the perimeter of the Turf Club is already congested) and the environment (there are so few green lungs in Penang).

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