Development of Town Hall Square, Viharamahadevi Park under MCUDP:

Bringing city's beauty closer to people

By Ranil Wijayapala

What the Town Hall Square would look like

People who used to visit the Colombo City on a daily basis and accustomed to viewing the nearly 100-year-old colonial type Town Hall building in the heart of the city with its surrounding fences, the lawn and adjoining Viharamahadevi Park today see it with demolished fences, a ground filled with soil and dead grass and a lot of other activities that are taking place in and around that area.

Despite this situation, people who used to walk across the Town Hall area to attend to various day-to-day needs feel that the area is more accessible to them than before as they can walk freely across the Town Hall area and the Viharamahadevi Park with no fences to delay them from reaching their desired destinations. Therefore, people feel that the Viharamahadevi Park and the Town Hall building are closer to them than ever before. So, the Town Hall Square, the main square in the city of Colombo, which attracts hundreds and thousands of people on a daily basis on multiple reasons varying from visiting hospitals, recreational purposes, education and various other purposes is becoming closer to the people.

However, what puzzles them now is whether that closeness will be temporary or permanent for them with the ongoing changes and the construction work. The answer lies at the hands of the authorities implementing the Metro Colombo Urban Development Project (MCUDP) which is aimed at mitigating floods and improving public convenience in the Metro Colombo area which consists of areas under the Colombo Municipal Council, Dehiwala - Mount Lavinia Municipal Council, Kotte Municipal Council and Kolonnawa Urban Council, as development of the Town Hall area and Viharamahadevi Park is also a part of this project. The project which has many components is now being implemented under the supervision of the Defence and Urban Development Ministry.

An artist's impression of the Viharamahadevi Park

According to Senior Engineer, Procurement of the Metro Colombo Urban Development Project C.M.M. Iqbal, under the MCUDP, this important and landmark area of Town Hall and the Viharamahadevi Park will be developed as a public square, integrating urban activity with recreation, beauty and increased connectivity while preserving and enhancing its colonial characteristics. The Town Hall area is an important landmark of the city and it is estimated that on a daily basis, except on public holidays, 60,000 pedestrians and 35,000 motorists use this section of the city. The Viharamahadevi Park attracts about 5,000 people a day which increases to about 8,000 on public holidays.

Therefore, it has become a prerequisite to develop this area to facilitate the people who are visiting this area on a daily basis.

In three stages

“These developments were commenced in three stages and the three stages of the project will cover the painting of the colonial type Town Hall building, improvement of the lawn surrounding it, resurfacing of the roads surrounding Town Hall and Viharamahadevi Park and the development of the Viharamahadevi Park. The three phases of the project have already commenced and will be completed by the end of this year”, Iqbal said. The Colombo Municipal Council is supervising the project that is being implemented under the MCUDP with funding made available by the World Bank. “If we take the Viharamahadevi Park, we are going to improve the park on par with public parks in other developed countries as the present park is in a primitive and dilapidated state compared to the standards of the public parks in other countries”, he said.

Inside the park, all the paths will be improved with an interlocking pavement with a linear park around it. Restaurants foot paths, an elephant bath, tables to facilitate the people to have their meals are some of the improvements to be carried out under this project.

According to Engineer Iqbal, the play area of the children’s park will be reinstalled according to international standards. “We are considering the safety of children when installing this new equipment which are available in major parks in other countries. We are also going to have water-based play areas in the park, enabling the children to have fun inside the park”, he said.

“We have given specifications for the contractors to install these equipment for the play area, considering the safety and standards” he said.

Apart from this, other facilities inside the park will also be developed by installing toilets, restaurants for the people to have their meals and refreshments while visiting the park for recreational purposes. As these developments are made in the Viharamahadevi Park, the area around the Town Hall will also be improved parallelly, enabling the people to relax in the area peacefully.

The Town Hall as it looks now

“Under this project, we are preserving the Town Hall building by painting it after removing its old paint. However, we are not going to make changes inside the building. It is up to the CMC authorities to make the required changes within the Town Hall building”, he said.

The development of Anagarika Dharmapala Mawatha, C.W.W. Kannangara Mawatha, F.R. Senanayake Mawatha and Nelum Pokuna Mawatha will also be carried out parallel to the improvement in the Viharamahadevi Park and the Town Hall area.

Senior Architect of the Colombo Municipal Council S.U.B. Dolapihilla, further explaining the development of the area around Town Hall, said the basic idea behind these developments is to facilitate the people arriving at the Town Hall Square, which is considered to be the biggest square in the Colombo City.

However, at present, this important part of the city is not planned in a way that unlocks its potential as a major landmark and vital open space in the heart of Colombo, limiting opportunities to integrate and increasing urban activity with recreation and beauty.

Different purposes

“We know that people are coming to this area for different purposes. If they have to walk far to get their businesses attended to fast and if they don’t have a place to relax while attending to their work, that will definitely inconvenience them. What we hope to do through this project is to avoid that inconvenience to the people”, he said.

Accordingly, the area around the Town Hall will be beautified and improved, enabling the people to relax there. He said the lawn of the Town Hall grounds will be replanted with Bermuda grass after removing the entire lawn it had earlier and a sophisticated sprinkler system will be installed in the lawn after improving the drainage system to prevent the lawn getting flooded during heavy rains.

Asked whether the area will be made available for public and political meetings in the future, he said that the ground was earlier used for political and other public meetings because it had security with the fence around it. “With the new improvements and the removal of the fence, the ground will no longer be suitable for such public events”, he said.

He said the road behind the Town Hall building will also be open to the public to move from one street to the other easily.

Apart from the projects under the MCUDP, the Colombo Municipal Council will also allocate Rs. 200 million to have two separate buildings in the Town Hall premises - one to relocate the section which people attend on a daily basis to pay their rates to the CMC and also to have an information centre for tourists.

“We are hoping to preserve the original architectural value of the Town Hall building as its ground floor was originally designed as a ballroom. We are trying our best to preserve it as a ballroom, shifting the offices currently there to another location”, he said.

Buildings for vendors

A special feature under this project is that not a single vendor will lose their livelihood; three small buildings will be set up to relocate the businesses of the vendors, he said.

He said although Viharamahadevi Park is centrally located in the city, it offers limited connectivity between the busy urban streets that surround it with a fence that has been erected right around its perimeter. As such, the present use and presentation of space within the Town Hall area makes its resources less visible and less usable to the public. “Through this project, we hope to create that connectivity between the people and this area”, Dolapihilla said. He said the connectivity of the area will be improved with the removal of the fence around the park and by making the park more accessible to the people. “Even those who are working and residing around the park will be able to walk across the park at any time of the day with the removal of the fence and with the installation of the lighting system within the park”, he said.

Asked whether there is any possibility of having unwanted elements there in the park after making it accessible during night, Dolapihilla said that there is no need to worry about such a situation as the park will be lit up in the night with a special lighting system.

“We should not stop these developments fearing that bad things would happen. When the Independence Square area was open for the public during the night, there were such fears among the people. But nothing happened as enough security was at hand in the area. Likewise, the Viharamahadevi Park will also be made accessible to the people during the night and either the Colombo Municipal Council or the Urban Development Authority will deploy security personnel in the park”, he said.

Explaining the changes within the park, he said the equipment of the present ‘Sathutu Uyana’ area will be replaced with a children’s play area as the CMC has decided to shift the Sathutu Uyana to Elli House Park, Madampitiya since there is a proposal to develop it as a theme park.

“The children’s play area in the Viharamahadevi Park will be redone in a more innovative manner and a lot of activities will be available for the children once this play area is completed”, he said.

According to Dolapihilla, people in the city will be able to have a wonderful experience once these changes are effected within the Viharamahadevi park and the area surrounding the Town Hall, developing it as the main square in the Colombo City where people can gather and relax, improving the connectivity between the city and its people.