- Title: IRAQ: Baghdad municipality to revitalise oldest street of the capital
- Date: 3rd February 2010
- Summary: PEOPLE IN AL-RASHEED STREET
- Embargoed: 18th February 2010 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Iraq
- Country: Iraq
- Topics: General
- Reuters ID: LVA9TPRN1TWM7MK2BBKH0IJA6N6S
- Story Text: The Baghdad Municipality plans to renovate the historic al-Rasheed Street in the largest Iraqi reconstruction project since the American-led invasion of 2003.
Once a commercial artery, al-Rasheed Street in downtown Baghdad has been battered by nearly three decades of war and sanctions and the seven billion dollar restoration project aims to restore the street to its former glory.
Publishing house-owner Chasib al-Bnya, says the street is considered to be one of the capital's most important cultural areas, but the traditional 'Shanashel' style buildings, typical of Baghdad, have been left in a state of poor repair and need urgent attention.
"This street has a special feature and it is artistic due to its old heritage. As you know the old Baghdadi buildings were designed in the 'Shanashel' style. After the fall of the former regime and the arrival of the new democracy, we were told that Baghdad's municipality would reconstruct this vital street and restore it to its original splendour. But at the same time, most parts of this street are closed and the traffic is restricted," he said.
The crumbling facades of al-Rasheed street now bear only a muted testimony to their past, when Iraq, flush with new money from oil in the 1950s, celebrated its wealth in the shops and theatres of its oldest street. Here, Western and Arabic architectural styles rubbed shoulders in an optimistic glow of mid-century modernism. But now, windows are broken or covered in dust.
Chasib said the billions of Iraqi dinars spent on the street were wasted, as the buildings are all now in ruins and the street itself is unusable.
"The cost of reconstructing al-Rasheed street....they (the government) spent eight billion Iraqi dinars ($ 6,750,000) just to paint the facades of buildings and rebuild some of the places in a way that is consistent with the street. But you can see that the pavements are damaged and dirty and pedestrians cannot even walk on them. The whole of al-Rasheed street is in ruins," he said.
Al-Rasheed Street was opened to public in July 1916 and has been the setting for some important milestones in Iraqi history: it was the place where Iraqi Shiites and Sunnis held their first meeting in the plan to overthrow British rule in 1920 at Hayder Khana Mosque and was also where the Communist party led the largest uprising against an Iraqi-British agreement in 1948.
The new renovation plan is the most ambitious project for Iraq in many years, and comes in the wake of a decline in violence over the past two years.
An American company and two other Iraqi companies won the contract to develop the historic Baghdadi street.
"Baghdad's municipality contracted a consultancy firm, including three American and Iraqi companies, to carry out the design, and to do a planning and traffic study as well as to study the infrastructure as part of the project to develop al-Rasheed street .The project included the area from al-Tahrir square in the south to Arab Warrior Square in the north," Mohssen al-Etabee, Director of the Engineering Department in the Baghdad municipality, told Reuters.
Because of the huge sums involved in carrying out the project, the Baghdad municipality wants to establish a company in partnership with the private sector. This could be similar to the company which reconstructed Beirut after 1990, creating thousands of jobs and drawing billions of dollars of foreign and local investment to the Lebanese capital.
"Frankly, more than 80 percent of the facilities in the development zone belong to the private sector. For practical reasons, the Government cannot own all these facilities because that would cost them huge amounts of money which the investment budget cannot afford. We have made a number of suggestions to the General Secretariat of the Council of Ministers, and one of these suggestions is to establish a company including the private and public sectors, like the Lebanese Soldier Company which developed downtown Beirut," al-Etabee said.
Baghdad's municipality has unveiled drawings of what al-Rasheed street could look like, showing a glistening pedestrian mall with palm trees and restored porticoes above the two-storey, columned shops.
But al-Etabee said the implementation of the project depended on several important factors:
"We think that the designs will definitely be achieved this year. As for the phases of implementing the project, that will depend on the legislation that will be passed or on the investment budget. We hope the investment budget will be able to include such a huge project," he added.
Al-Rasheed Street was the first street to be electrically illuminated in Baghdad in 1917. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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