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
No comments:
Post a Comment