KLCC Park

About half of the Kuala Lumpur City Centre (KLCC) district is occupied by an open green area accessible to everyone. Lawns, playgrounds, a running track, and walkways come together in one park where people stroll and exercise. Tall mature trees stand out especially among the plantings: beside the towers, their canopies give the place a different scale.

In nineteen eighty-two, state planners told the leadership of the Selangor Turf Club that they wanted to turn the site by Jalan Ampang into a green zone for Kuala Lumpur and ease the roads nearby at the same time. The club then occupied the area of today’s Kuala Lumpur City Centre (KLCC) district. The racing oval and grandstands stood here, and polo was played inside the racecourse.

The club’s chairman, Lee Kok Chee, had to preserve an enterprise that had occupied this site for almost ninety years. The club earned money from membership fees and the betting pool. It was under Lee that bets began to be taken by telephone, while race results were transmitted between racecourses over a closed television network. An active and profitable enterprise, with horses, stables, and a regular public, had to relocate.

The move was carried out by the next chairman, Ronald Khoo Teng Swee. He had to take horse racing out of the center without losing its revenue. In nineteen eighty-eight, the club bought two hundred fifty-five acres of former mining land in Sungai Besi. Two years later, construction of the new racecourse began there. The last race at Jalan Ampang took place in August nineteen ninety-two.

They decided not to dress up the result in pretty words. In the year of the last race, the club made a record profit of eight million six hundred seventy thousand ringgit. The horses were already on the new track the following year. It accommodated seven hundred twenty stalls, a veterinary hospital, a swimming pool for horses, and a two-kilometer racing circuit. The racecourse continued operating, while developers dismantled the old grandstands and track.

The promised green zone took up roughly half of the new business district. A park open to everyone was laid out here, with footpaths, playgrounds, and a running track. Before the site was cleared, landscapers selected twenty-three mature trees of rare species from the former turf club and transplanted them into the park. The racing oval is gone; its old trees remain among the plantings of Kuala Lumpur City Centre (KLCC).