Mitre’s Denizens Of The Night

Source : The Straits Times, 16 Aug 2007

This dilapidated hotel in Killiney Road is expected to be demolished at year end, after much wrangling. The sale of the site is expected to hit $200 million. Life! survived a night there to tell the tale

Many people pass by 145 Killiney Road in the heart of Orchard Road without a second glance.

But venture up the dim 70m driveway lit by two lamps, past a long wall scrawled with graffiti, and you will come upon a rundown two-storey house.

It looms incongruously against the backdrop of Orchard Road’s familiar skyline of highrise condominiums and office buildings.

The structure is Mitre Hotel, planted right smack on prime land and sitting on a pot of gold: This 40,000 sq ft freehold site is expected to fetch about $200 million when it gets sold.

Much has been written about the court dispute that has plagued it. Most of the family which owns it had been wanting to sell the land since the height of the property boom in 1996. But one member has been holding out against the sale - for money or for principle, the accounts are conflicting.

But the long saga has played itself out and the end is certain: In May, a judge ruled in favour of 11 members of the family. The site will be sold by public tender and has been up for sale since last week. The building is expected to be demolished by the end of the year.

Amid the court trysts, little is known about the Mitre experience and her inhabitants, and why some old regulars keep going back.

So before the building bites the dust, Life! spent a night there last weekend to check out its quirky denizens, and to catch diehards making their last pilgrimages to the hotel once famous for its cheap beer.

From hotel to lodging house

FIRST built in the 1870s, Mitre (pronounced My-ter) was bought by five members of the Chiam family in 1948 for $61,000. They turned it into a hotel and it was patronised by oil rig divers, divers and backpackers in the 1970s and 1980s.

All the original owners have died except Chiam Heng Luan, 93, who also founded the Sloane Court Hotel in Balmoral Road. The descendants of the original five owners have been slugging it out in the High Court for the past 30 years.

Mitre ceased operating in 2002 and is now being run as a lodging house.

Its shadowy and crumbly compound is a place out of time. The main gate is a creaky, retro, tesselated grill gate which is locked at midnight.

Venture into the main lobby and you will pass rows of dusty sofas and chairs that line the graffiti-ed walls. The odd rat scurries away as you gingerly make your way through. There are three ceiling fans, but only one stirs the air, languidly.

The hotel’s quirky dwellers add to the surreal experience. The most famous - or infamous - denizen is Mr Chiam Heng Hsien, 62, a well-spoken man with a shock of white hair and arthritic legs. He spends his nights on a small bed in a large hall behind the bar.

You may catch him making his way up the driveway at night and pushing a market trolley to support his bent legs. Topless.

His wife and two daughters live in a terrace house off Grange Road.

He, like the old building, is a kind of lone ranger.

Mr Chiam, who has a 10 per cent share of the property, is the one who has been holding out against the family’s decision to sell the site. He is the son of the late Mr Chiam Toh Moo, one of the original owners.

But he has lost the long-drawn tussle. While he has spent most of his life as manager and caretaker at Mitre, he has to leave the site at least four weeks before the sale is completed.

Life! caught him last Saturday sitting pensively on the porch. He was wary on the subject of Mitre, but spoke freely on stocks, investments and politics.

He graduated in 1968 with a physics degree from the then University of Singapore, and worked briefly as a civil servant. He took over the running of the hotel in 1975.
It was reported that he refused to allow the sale in 1996 unless he received $21 million. So why did he hold out selling, since he’d be rich after the sale?

He doesn’t reply.

Was it for sentimental reasons? He says: ‘I never think about what I’ll miss. A memory is only a memory - if it’s gone, it’s gone.’

He adds: ‘What else is there to do? Except to try to take some pictures of the place.’

Or, like many other thirsty travellers, you can hit the bar on the ground floor, which is lit by the stark glow of a single fluorescent tube.

Manning the bar is a woman in her 30s who goes by the name of Jesse, Sophia or Vivian, depending on who you are and when you ask her.

The chatty eccentric, who mans the hotel from early afternoon to about 10pm when Mr Chiam takes over, is something of a mystery.

She says she started working here six to seven years ago, but does not say if she is paid and why she works here. On what she would do after this place closes, she says: ‘Find another job, lor.’

And her bartending is erratic: She serves beer at $7 a can only to regulars - others get 7-Up.

Cheap drinks, smelly toilet

After some rounds, those needing a leak need to pick their way past a large hall which looks and smells like an abandoned storeroom.

Broken chairs, a pool table heaped with debris and empty beer boxes litter the place. When you get to the loo, the toilet bowl will convince your bladder to hang on a little longer.

The murky contents of the bowl is a scary black-brown. Maggots crawl inside.

A walk upstairs, up the creaky staircase, leads you to a large hall, empty compared to the clutter downstairs. Bits of the night sky are visible through gaps in the roof.

You flick on the light switch; surprisingly, it works.

One room is locked, and kept for an Australian - a Mr Matthews - who deals in antiques, says Mr Chiam.

Through a chink in the door, you can see a bed covered with clean, white sheets and a suitcase on the floor.

But this is the only vaguely liveable room. The others are empty and in various states of dilapidation.

Most have thin, dirt-grey mattresses and stained sinks.

One has a hole in the floor that enables you to look into the first floor. Another has a pillow with its stuffing ripped to pieces on the floor.

It is not a place for lingering, and you return to the first floor.

Some visitors drop in at about 11pm. Administrative assistant Siti Suhaidah, 27, has brought her two friends to check out a place she used to party till the wee hours about seven years ago.

‘It’s a place you came to because a friend brought you here,’ she says. ‘It’s still got a lot of memories and character.’

They leave soon after, and Mr Chiam retires to bed at about 11.30pm, leaving us to snoop around.

Things are quiet until 3am, when another party ambles through the gates looking for a late-night drink.

The bar is closed but they stay to reminisce fondly about the old days.

Mr Hari Devan, 42, who is in between jobs, says this used to be a friendly watering hole for the post-clubbing crowd to round up a night.

Foreigners - both lodgers and travellers who hear about this place by word of mouth - used to hang out here for cheap drinks.

‘People used to go to the toilet just by the smell,’ he said with a laugh. ‘Even then, most of them, even the women, preferred to do it in the bushes.’

The two other men leave for a place that’s open and Mitre Hotel becomes a ghost town again. The odd rat rears its head.

Birds start twittering at 6.30am and daylight renders the measly electric lights useless.

From the rubble of Mitre a new building, perhaps a condominium, will rise, and the only memories left will be faded stories about a dingy hotel that used to stand here.

‘A memory is only a memory. If it’s gone, it’s gone’

Mr Chiam Heng Hsien, 62, who has a 10 per cent share of the property and still sleeps there at night

‘It’s a place you came to because a friend brought you here. It’s still got a lot of memories and character’

Administrative assistant Siti Suhaidah, 27, who brought two friends to check out the place where she used to party till the wee hours

‘People used to go to the toilet just by the smell. And most of them, even the women, preferred to do it in the bushes’

Mr Hari Devan, 42, who is in between jobs, on the place being a friendly watering hole for the post-clubbing crowd