Jinja hotel caught between heritage rock, glass future

The office the new principal walked into will soon be a pile of rubble. Mr Kawere will take his staff across Kampala Road to YMCA for temporary refuge as the Crested Crane Hotel, home of UHTTI, goes down to pave way for the construction of a Shs24 billion modern building to house the day-to-day management of the tourism and training institute.

There were deep sighs of relief on Wednesday when Ms Rebecca Kadaga, the First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for East African Community Affairs, stamped her approval for the demolition to take off.

“We are not planning to disrupt the process. What we want to be sure [of] is what you are going to put in place after you demolish the old one,” Ms Kadaga told a meeting of leaders and stakeholders that included Tourism minister Tom Butime, his deputy Martin Mugarra, Tourism permanent secretary Doreen Katusiime, and Persis Namuganza, the junior Lands, Housing and Urban Development minister, who is a key player in Busoga politics.

As Busoga’s political lynchpin, the sub-region’s political leaders told Saturday Monitor that Kadaga’s decision was the final hammer that cracked the walls of the old hotel building. It is now done.

Philosophical 
Mr Daniel Kazungu, the public relations manager at UHTTI, heaved with philosophical underpinnings in explaining the decision they were taking in the construction of a multi-billion tourism training school at the expense of the heritage.

Drawing from Jeremy Bentham’s Utilitarian Principle of the greatest good for the greatest number of people, Mr Kazungu said when directed towards making social, economic or political decisions, a utilitarian would aim for the betterment of society as a whole.

“Heritage is not mere sentiment. It is indeed of great value to culture and history, but looking at many factors on the table, that action that results in the happiness of the greatest number of people in society or a group is ultimately the better choice,” he said.

Mr Kazungu’s is a view backed by the chairperson of Uganda Tourism Board, Mr Daudi Migereko. The former Lands, Housing and Urban Development minister urged those voicing opinions on the planned project to consider the potential gains, as well as what experts are saying.

“If we have to listen to what the technical people are saying, what is the cost of preserving it? If the cost is not too high, they can preserve it, but we need the area redeveloped,” Mr Migereko, one of Busoga’s political decision-makers, said.

Former principal, Ms Namutosi said the historical significance of the old hotel was not lost on them and that they would have loved to preserve it for posterity but we “need the modern infrastructure to be able to transit to a centre of excellence.”

Growing attachment
For a while, Ugandans appeared not to give a pig’s tail what went on. A few isolated voices here and there would be drowned by the sounds of diggers breaking down walls of historic buildings.

Such was the fate of Christ the King Church. In 2017, the Catholic Church brought down their 87-year-old iconic church on Colville Street with little ado.

If Pioneer Mall held any significant value to the nation, few noticed when it was replaced with a towering mall.

Monuments like Fort Lugard were lost to the Uganda Muslim Supreme Council mosque and the Mengo government without as much as a whimper by the central government or the public.

But something was simmering and the full scale of the sentiment was on display for all to see on September 20, 2020. Scores of Ugandans broke down in tears as they watched a huge fire consume the iconic Makerere University Main Building.

The mass consciousness has in the recent past increased. Ugandans now care, and this was palpable recently when Watoto Church (formerly Kampala Pentecostal Church or KPC) sought to demolish the historic Norman Cinema building. Watoto wants to replace it with a 12-storey building, three-star hotel, 3,000-seater auditorium, a shopping centre and youth centre. 

Conservators and the general public were, however, as loud as they could possibly be when attempts were made to bring down the Uganda National Cultural Centre (National Theatre). A campaign dubbed “Don’t Demolish Our Heritage” and #SaveWatotoChurch” dominated social media for days, suggesting that the intention to save the 1940s brainchild of Indian businessman Norman Godinho was up to demand.

“The old building should be improved unless they have identified structural defects,” Mr Simon Kaita, the Jinja City tourism officer, said of the Crested Cranes Hotel.

“Such buildings, when they are improved on the pricing for someone to sleep will be twice or three times more than the new structures because it has historical background of people who slept in it,” he added.

No-go area
The renewed clamour for heritage is not simplistic. Once a historic property is demolished, it is lost. In most cases, the defence for demolition is that the old will be lived in the new with facadism, but Simon Musasizi, a conservator with the Cross Cultural Foundation Uganda (CCFU), says although this tries to salvage something, a new building totally creates its own memories.

Dr Philip Kwesiga, the head of the Department of Visual Communication Design and Multimedia at Makerere’s School of Industrial and Fine Arts, said demolition of historic buildings should be avoided at all costs.

Writing in the Global Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences, he argued: “All new buildings should go through a rigorous review before plans are approved and where there are also listed buildings, plans should be put in place to preserve the features of such buildings.”

In 2018, CCFU raised the red flag over the threat the changing skylines of major towns in the country was having on the architectural heritage of urban landscape.

With funding from the European Union Delegation, the Foundation undertook a project for the protection and promotion of historical buildings and sites in Kampala, Jinja and Entebbe under the theme, “Connecting with our heritage through historic buildings and sites.”

The project, part of the 2018 European Year for Cultural Heritage, saw the identification of 60 buildings and sites in the three cities; the production of a photographic book titled Beyond Reeds and Bricks—Historical Sites and Buildings in Kampala, Jinja and Entebbe; the creation of a historical building maps (in both digital and hard copy format) for the three cities; and the building of an app for historical buildings.

Case for gentrification 

Yet amid all academic citations and qualified opinions, it is almost impossible to ignore the decision that had to be made and was ultimately made by UHTTI in Jinja.
The country’s only public tertiary institution mandated to skill human resources in hospitality and tourism management, UHTTI’s old building, which consists of 35 rooms, a restaurant, and a bar section, already looks like a relic as the new iconic arch 85-room hotel overshadows it.

Started in the 1980s at Fairway Hotel as a pilot school under United Nations Development Programme, and the International Labour Organisation project, UHTTI was formally established in 1994 by an Act of Parliament and re-established by UHTTI Act 2015 as the Uganda Hotel and Tourism Training Institute under the Ministry of Tourism, Wildlife and Antiquities.

Seven acres might look like a huge piece of land but with the new hotel in place, management found it difficult to fit another new structure for the institute on the same piece of land.

Modern architects would argue that a 200-by-400 strip of land is enough to carry the foundation of an institute. There is more than such a strip at UHTTI, but the project implementation considered more than that.

Officials say the old building had structural defects and that repeated renovations were not helping much.

Mr Kawere told Monitor that in 2016, ENGpro International Lab, a regional civil engineering, aquaculture and project management firm, in association with Central Materials Laboratory, conducted geotechnical investigations and structural integrity at the institute.

“The investigations were aimed at evaluating the in-situ soil properties and obtaining suitable geotechnical data for appropriate design of foundation for the proposed structure to be constructed at the site, as well as obtaining any relevant parameters related to the structural integrity in general,” Mr Kawere said.

This publication could not independently verify the claims as there was no copy readily available, but Mr Kazungu said the structural integrity test had revealed major and irreversible structural failures in many columns, slabs and beams.

At the site, there were visible signs of exposed concrete elements around reinforcement bars and visibly rusted frames. Cracks are also visible on some parts of the walls.

Monitor understands it is these defects that informed that conclusion that the structure has deteriorated and was rife for total replacement.