Financial Times

After 133 years
Back home again for the Colombo Club
The Colombo Club - an elitist club for Sri Lanka's topnotch business community - has returned to the place where it first originated 133 years ago - the Taj Samudra Hotel premises!

The Club, whose restricted 300-plus members represents a who's-who of the private sector, last week set up base on the upper floor of the hotel - right behind the oval-shaped former Tourist Board building overlooking the Galle Face Green where the club began operations in 1871. For the past eight years, the club has been operating at a nice location in the new wing of the former Oberoi hotel but the lease was not extended last year by the new owners, Asian Hotels Ltd (just before John Keells Holdings (JKH) took over). Even after the JKH takeover the premises were required by the new management, according to Deva Rodrigo, current chairman of the club and former secretary. Rodrigo, who took over after Reggie Candappa's death in early December, said Candappa along with former treasurer Tissa Bandaranayake negotiated the current lease at the Taj hotel.

"Candappa was the driving force in recent years and ensured activities proceeded even during the difficult days of the JVP insurgency when the club almost went into hibernation," he told The Sunday Times FT. After negotiations and renovations that cost over Rs. 10 million, the club opened its doors at the new venue late last month. One of the first events at the club was a meeting by the Joint Business Forum (J-Biz) to plan a new strategy to reduce acrimony between President Chandrika Kumaratunga and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. Over the years the club, whose first president was Lord Longdon and later Lord Gregory with the rooms of the old Colombo Club named after them and now used as function rooms by the Taj, has had a "nomadic existence" moving from the Ceylinco House, basement of the Grand Oriental Hotel (former Taprobane), Galadari Meridien, Colombo Hilton and the Oberoi before returning home.

Rodrigo, also deputy chairman of the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce and senior country partner at Pricewaterhouse Coopers, said the club has signed a long 15-year lease with the Taj management which has agreed to "give us the old building and our first premises back if - sometime later - it (Taj) decides to vacate." The Club is launching a new drive for life membership at Rs 150,000 and has also requested members for a special contribution of Rs. 10,000 to help fund the new premises.

The club's new facility of over 5,000 square feet of space is larger than that of the old premises at the former Oberoi hotel. The club was ejected from the oval-shaped building in 1956 after the government acquired it and the National Provident Fund moved in. The building was to be demolished until a committee of experts involved in the restoration of old buildings prevailed upon the authorities not to do so. It is now preserved as a national heritage. Membership to the club is strictly by invitation.

Reggie Abeyawira continues as vice chairman of the club while other changes are Tissa Bandaranayake as secretary and Hemaka Amarasuriya as treasurer.

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