GEORGE TOWN, Sept 8 — Long before the arrival of the 24-hour convenience store in Penang, there was the 24-hour Sia Boey wet market.
The 150-year-old marketplace along the Prangin Canal offered reasonably-priced hawker food and economy rice stalls as well as stalls selling fresh produce, poultry and seafood.
It was the place for locals to buy their groceries, get a haircut (just 20 cents) or eat a bowl of Hokkien mee (10 cents!).
Back in the day, boats used the canal to bring in stocks and supplies.
Lim Lee Hai, 64, still remembers his father's barber shop next to the Prangin Canal in between a charcoal shop and a coffee maker.
A long-time resident, Tan Siew Inn, 80, vividly recalls the time a portion of the market was bombed during World War II when she was at a nearby school and how she had heard the explosions.
Over the years, the canal that used to be a pristine waterway became a dark murky dumpsite and Sia Boey became associated with the strong stench from the canal in the last few decades before it closed in 2004.
Since the market’s closure to make way for the then Phase Five Komtar project, the whole piece of land covering 5.5 acres right in the heart of the city of George Town was left vacant.
The remaining pre-war shophouses on the site were vacated and slowly crumbled into ruins as the Phase Five project never took off.
Over the weekend, the vacant marketplace was relaunched under the Sia Boey: Reborn project to turn the whole area into a proposed Penang Heritage Arts District.
Yayasan Haji Zainuddin signed a deal with Penang Development Corporation (PDC) for a 30 years plus 30 years lease for 1.5 acres of the land to build a new iconic art museum, Ilham Penang.
Yayasan Haji Zainuddin will build the RM30 million Ilham Penang and cover the cost of its operations and maintenance over the period of the lease.
According to Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng who launched the project on Sunday, the museum will have 45,000 square feet of gallery space and will offer a cafe, a library, art storage facilities and a 200-seat auditorium.
“Ilham Penang will be a catalyst for the urban regeneration of George Town,” he said in his speech at the launch.
In conjunction with the launch of the project, an exhibition on the history and stories of Sia Boey along with the new proposed plans for the site is now being exhibited at the old market site.
The exhibition is open to the public from now until Sept 13 between 9am and 6.30pm daily.
For more information about the project, email to [email protected].
