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GEMMAYZEH CHANGING: NEW HABITS COME TO AN OLD QUARTER
Not all Beirutis welcome the rise of the city's newest clubbing district
By Jim Quilty and Leila Diab
Daily Star staff
Daily Star - Lebanon
Aug 31 2005
Editor's note: This is the first of a two-part series looking at the
changing face of the old Beirut neighborhood of Gemmayzeh.
BEIRUT: "The neighborhood used to be quiet and calm past 9 or 10
p.m.," recalls Pierre Comati. "I'm not against progress, but we have
had an invasion of people that we don't know and this has completely
changed the soul of Gemmayzeh." Comati has been a resident of the
Beirut quarter of Gemmayzeh since 1941. The change at the root of
his anxiety is as global as the symptoms are local.
Nightlife in this town is a moveable feast. When the Civil War divided
their city, Beirutis watered themselves either in Ras Beirut or in
the northern suburbs of Kaslik and Zouq. In the late 1990s, restless
clubbers migrated to Monnot Street, near Beirut's old Green Line
between West and East Beirut.
For the last couple of years evening migrations have focused on
Gemmayzeh, named after a sycamore tree that was once a landmark here.
Since 2003, boutique-sized spaces - some derelict, others housing
daytime businesses like butchers and magazine shops - have been turned
over to miniature bars and bistros.
The change has been remarkable. In 1998 Gemmayzeh boasted two places
to buy a drink - Qahwat al-Azaz (which has since been renovated
beyond recognition and renamed the "Gemmayzeh Cafe") and Le Chef,
which has changed only in the death of one of its senior partners.
Today Qahwat al-Azaz and Le Chef share their street with some 15
different cafe-bar-restaurants with that number again preparing to
open. The increase in street traffic has been commensurate.
Recent developments have been conspicuous, but these restaurants are
not the first "outsiders" to enter the neighborhood - this newspaper
has had its offices here since the mid-1990s and young couples have
been drifting in, looking for cheap flats, for years. Changes in
commercial usage can be ephemeral or they may signal more lasting
social changes. Gemmayzeh had identities before its most recent
metamorphosis, and there is evidence to suggest it will acquire others.
Wedged between Mar Maroun and the Ottoman mansions of Sursock Quarter
to the south and Beirut Port to the north, Gemmayzeh is most likely
recognized as the neighborhood on the eastern edge of Solidere's
downtown reconstruction project.
Place names slide around over time and these days "Gemmayzeh" has
come to refer to Rue Gouraud, named after the general who proclaimed
the birth of "Greater Lebanon" and became the first High Commissioner
of France's Lebanon Mandate. Before it became "Gouraud" it had a more
functional name - the Tripoli Road.
A nebulously defined quarter, Gemmayzeh is sometimes mentioned in
history books as a predominantly Greek Orthodox mercantile district.
Others argue that, given the fact that the Ottoman tramline ran through
here, it seems unlikely that it ever had the religious uniformity
of Sursock, for instance. Nowadays its older residents are Orthodox,
Maronite and Armenian, the latter seeming to have arrived after World
War I.
"We were the pioneers of the area," says Salim Hermes, chairman
and general manager of Hermes Electrical store. The company opened
in Gemmayzeh in 1956 and Hermes says his family is famous locally
for erecting the Hermes Building, one of the first buildings in the
neighborhood.
Hermes depicts a quarter largely untouched by changes radiating from
the nearby city centre over the years, something that inspired people
to leave. "The people who used to live here are either very old, or
dead," he says. "Their children are leaving because they don't want
to live in a building with no lift, or central heating ... This old
neighborhood has known a revolution in its mentality lately because
of the opening of all those restaurants."
People ate out in Gemmayzeh before 2003, of course, and there seems
no uniformity of opinion among veteran restaurateurs about the
recent changes.
The owner of the 50-year-old Snack Harik, Mrs. Harik, complains that
people who've lived in Gemmayzeh for tens of years are now selling
their houses and leaving because daytime street life is extinct.
"Sure they increased the night-time activity," she says, "but they
killed the movement of the daytime in the process."
Francois Ephrem Bassil, chef and owner of Gemmayzeh's landmark Le
Chef Restaurant, is pragmatic about the changes. "Now there are many
restaurants, and it's better. They're replacing old places with bars
and restaurants, resulting in more activity at night."
Apart from the original Qahwat al-Azaz, he says, his was the first
restaurant to open in this area in 1967. "When I opened Le Chef,"
he recalls, "one of my neighbors asked me, 'Why are you opening a
restaurant? There's nothing here.'"
Times have changed. The proliferation of new bars and restaurants has
changed the social makeup of the night-time traffic moving through
the neighborhood. This has had its inevitable impact on the business
environment.
Gemmayzeh Mukthtar Elie Nassar estimates that residential and
commercial rents in Gemmayzeh have increased by 2000 percent in the
last three years. He hastens to add, though, that this increase can't
be attributed to the restaurant boom alone.
Like everyplace else in the country where residency has been stable
since before 1975, Gemmayzeh operates within the "old rent" regime.
Lebanon's currency was remarkably stable until the 1982 Israeli
invasion, being much closer to parity with the U.S. dollar than it
is today. After 1982 the currency underwent radical devaluation.
Consequently, anyone who made rental arrangements before the currency
started going terribly wrong may still pay at the old rate - LL250.00
per month, for instance. No legal provision has yet been passed
to allow landlords to bring rents up to speed with today's exchange
rates. Tenants have the prerogative to stay at the old rates until they
leave (landlords can charge new tenants at market rates, of course) or
to renegotiate their rates voluntarily. Solvent landlords sometimes buy
out the old rent contract, effectively paying their tenants to leave.
Most of the rate increases, Nassar says, derive from landlords'
re-negotiating old rental agreements. One of the first of the new
restaurants to open in the quarter (Barouie), for instance, rents a
space that used to go for $100.00 per month. The present tenants pay
$2000.00 a month.
If the rents had been fair to begin with, Nassar continues, the recent
increase would be a mere 100 percent.
In the moral economy of what tenants should have been paying all along,
a rent increase of 100 percent may be modest. In real terms, though,
an opportunity to increase earnings by the margin separating old
rents from market rates - in otherwise sleepy Gemmayzeh, no less -
would be tempting for any landlord. There is a market engine behind
social change in this quarter.
Not all Beirutis welcome the rise of the city's newest clubbing district
By Jim Quilty and Leila Diab
Daily Star staff
Daily Star - Lebanon
Aug 31 2005
Editor's note: This is the first of a two-part series looking at the
changing face of the old Beirut neighborhood of Gemmayzeh.
BEIRUT: "The neighborhood used to be quiet and calm past 9 or 10
p.m.," recalls Pierre Comati. "I'm not against progress, but we have
had an invasion of people that we don't know and this has completely
changed the soul of Gemmayzeh." Comati has been a resident of the
Beirut quarter of Gemmayzeh since 1941. The change at the root of
his anxiety is as global as the symptoms are local.
Nightlife in this town is a moveable feast. When the Civil War divided
their city, Beirutis watered themselves either in Ras Beirut or in
the northern suburbs of Kaslik and Zouq. In the late 1990s, restless
clubbers migrated to Monnot Street, near Beirut's old Green Line
between West and East Beirut.
For the last couple of years evening migrations have focused on
Gemmayzeh, named after a sycamore tree that was once a landmark here.
Since 2003, boutique-sized spaces - some derelict, others housing
daytime businesses like butchers and magazine shops - have been turned
over to miniature bars and bistros.
The change has been remarkable. In 1998 Gemmayzeh boasted two places
to buy a drink - Qahwat al-Azaz (which has since been renovated
beyond recognition and renamed the "Gemmayzeh Cafe") and Le Chef,
which has changed only in the death of one of its senior partners.
Today Qahwat al-Azaz and Le Chef share their street with some 15
different cafe-bar-restaurants with that number again preparing to
open. The increase in street traffic has been commensurate.
Recent developments have been conspicuous, but these restaurants are
not the first "outsiders" to enter the neighborhood - this newspaper
has had its offices here since the mid-1990s and young couples have
been drifting in, looking for cheap flats, for years. Changes in
commercial usage can be ephemeral or they may signal more lasting
social changes. Gemmayzeh had identities before its most recent
metamorphosis, and there is evidence to suggest it will acquire others.
Wedged between Mar Maroun and the Ottoman mansions of Sursock Quarter
to the south and Beirut Port to the north, Gemmayzeh is most likely
recognized as the neighborhood on the eastern edge of Solidere's
downtown reconstruction project.
Place names slide around over time and these days "Gemmayzeh" has
come to refer to Rue Gouraud, named after the general who proclaimed
the birth of "Greater Lebanon" and became the first High Commissioner
of France's Lebanon Mandate. Before it became "Gouraud" it had a more
functional name - the Tripoli Road.
A nebulously defined quarter, Gemmayzeh is sometimes mentioned in
history books as a predominantly Greek Orthodox mercantile district.
Others argue that, given the fact that the Ottoman tramline ran through
here, it seems unlikely that it ever had the religious uniformity
of Sursock, for instance. Nowadays its older residents are Orthodox,
Maronite and Armenian, the latter seeming to have arrived after World
War I.
"We were the pioneers of the area," says Salim Hermes, chairman
and general manager of Hermes Electrical store. The company opened
in Gemmayzeh in 1956 and Hermes says his family is famous locally
for erecting the Hermes Building, one of the first buildings in the
neighborhood.
Hermes depicts a quarter largely untouched by changes radiating from
the nearby city centre over the years, something that inspired people
to leave. "The people who used to live here are either very old, or
dead," he says. "Their children are leaving because they don't want
to live in a building with no lift, or central heating ... This old
neighborhood has known a revolution in its mentality lately because
of the opening of all those restaurants."
People ate out in Gemmayzeh before 2003, of course, and there seems
no uniformity of opinion among veteran restaurateurs about the
recent changes.
The owner of the 50-year-old Snack Harik, Mrs. Harik, complains that
people who've lived in Gemmayzeh for tens of years are now selling
their houses and leaving because daytime street life is extinct.
"Sure they increased the night-time activity," she says, "but they
killed the movement of the daytime in the process."
Francois Ephrem Bassil, chef and owner of Gemmayzeh's landmark Le
Chef Restaurant, is pragmatic about the changes. "Now there are many
restaurants, and it's better. They're replacing old places with bars
and restaurants, resulting in more activity at night."
Apart from the original Qahwat al-Azaz, he says, his was the first
restaurant to open in this area in 1967. "When I opened Le Chef,"
he recalls, "one of my neighbors asked me, 'Why are you opening a
restaurant? There's nothing here.'"
Times have changed. The proliferation of new bars and restaurants has
changed the social makeup of the night-time traffic moving through
the neighborhood. This has had its inevitable impact on the business
environment.
Gemmayzeh Mukthtar Elie Nassar estimates that residential and
commercial rents in Gemmayzeh have increased by 2000 percent in the
last three years. He hastens to add, though, that this increase can't
be attributed to the restaurant boom alone.
Like everyplace else in the country where residency has been stable
since before 1975, Gemmayzeh operates within the "old rent" regime.
Lebanon's currency was remarkably stable until the 1982 Israeli
invasion, being much closer to parity with the U.S. dollar than it
is today. After 1982 the currency underwent radical devaluation.
Consequently, anyone who made rental arrangements before the currency
started going terribly wrong may still pay at the old rate - LL250.00
per month, for instance. No legal provision has yet been passed
to allow landlords to bring rents up to speed with today's exchange
rates. Tenants have the prerogative to stay at the old rates until they
leave (landlords can charge new tenants at market rates, of course) or
to renegotiate their rates voluntarily. Solvent landlords sometimes buy
out the old rent contract, effectively paying their tenants to leave.
Most of the rate increases, Nassar says, derive from landlords'
re-negotiating old rental agreements. One of the first of the new
restaurants to open in the quarter (Barouie), for instance, rents a
space that used to go for $100.00 per month. The present tenants pay
$2000.00 a month.
If the rents had been fair to begin with, Nassar continues, the recent
increase would be a mere 100 percent.
In the moral economy of what tenants should have been paying all along,
a rent increase of 100 percent may be modest. In real terms, though,
an opportunity to increase earnings by the margin separating old
rents from market rates - in otherwise sleepy Gemmayzeh, no less -
would be tempting for any landlord. There is a market engine behind
social change in this quarter.