The above two projects were given one chapter each in Mahathir's Memoirs. Both projects were played up into controversies by his detractors and it was refreshing to read about them from his perspectives.
The Twin Towers were sited on the former Selangor Turf Club, and no one can deny the fact that the weekend traffic jams there, especially on race days, was a nightmare. In fact, even on normal work-days, Ampang Road was a traffic nightmare then. To overcome this problem, the Turf Club was told to relocate to Sg Besi- and Ananda Krishnan, one of Malaysia's richest man, bought that prime property from the turf club. The government wanted a park for the city and it would be unfair to force Ananda Krishnan to give up a part of his land for it. Furthermore it would also be very costly for the government to buy it outright from him. To facilitate development approvals etc, it was decided that Petronas ( which has the financial muscle) buy into the property and go into a joint development project with Ananda Krishnan. As part owner of the whole property, it was also easier for the government to get their agreement to give up a portion of the land to be converted into a park.
The development designs were put out for tender and the proposal by Argentinian-American architect, Cesar Pelli, was chosen. His original design was just two square towers, much like the bombed-out twin towers of Manhattan, but at Mahathir's suggestion and offer of ideas, Islamic features and designs were incorporated into what it is now. An off the cuff light comment about making them the tallest towers in the world were taken seriously by the then CEO of Petronas who with Cesar Pelli added the building's height to enable them to be the tallest buildings in the world for a period of time.
Today, the Petronas Twin Towers, stand proudly as an icon that is recognised world-wide as the hallmark for Malaysia. And its critique can no longer whine that the project would bankrupt the country. If anything, the project had helped boost tourist arrivals and many of the property owners around the KLCC have become richer by many many times more.
The idea of putting up Putrajaya was not originated by Mahathir. It was suggested by Elyas Omar, who was then the mayor of Kuala Lumpur. The first objective was also to take out the pressure on the increasingly chocker-blocked streets of the city by sending out all the government servants (about 300,000 of them) to live and work outside of KL. Mahathir was inspired by purpose-built capital cities, Washington and Canberra among others - and set about in carrying out the project. Again the biggest issue brought out by his opponents was that this 'mega-project' would bankrupt the country. Mahathir has again proved that that notion was incorrect - in fact he argued that if the government servants were not sentimental about selling off their properties where their previous offices were located in the city of KL, the money earned from selling off these properties would more than offset the cost of developing Putrajaya.
Today, Putrajaya is also one of the main tourism must-see trips in Malaysia. There are countries now that have modelled the development of their new administrative capital on Putrajaya.
As pakdokter made these notes, pakdokter was reminded of the recent announcement that the PNB ( Permodalan Nasional Berhad) who owned the land around the Stadium Merdeka had wanted to redevelop the site and building, and amongst others - to build another very tall iconic office tower there. The immediate outcry was familiar - a waste of money, a glut of office space etc etc. As pakdokter looked over the Merdeka Stadium whenever pakdokter takes the monorail from KLSentral to Bukit Bintang -pakdokter could not help but feel sad at the decay and neglect of the area. And these days Merdeka Stadium is not longer being made use of very much. Pakdokter believes that that area should be developed. After all PNB has the money - pakdokter and millions of other people have our savings with PNB. Why should PNB not develop the site, move all its stable of companies to its iconic tower from the various other buildings they are in now, some of which they are probably paying rent for them. Once the area is developed into another KLCC-like district, pakdokter can imagine the properties along Birch Road, Loke Yew, Chinatown, High Street etc etc will see a boom! And these are not even in the least Melayu properties at that .......
Why don't detractors of this project protest when private developers keep on building office towers after office towers along Jalan Tun Razak, Mont Kiara, Solaris, and along other many 'Jalans' of the city if they worry so much about a glut of office spaces. They may argue that these developers use private money - but probably only for 10% of the cost. The remaining 90% is probably guaranteed by 'brave' banks - and if these banks were to fail under a property crunch ......the government then have to come in and bail them out even if these are private banks?......
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