Reykjavík Grapevine - 16.08.2013, Síða 26

Enter the hotel industry. With the closure
of such popular concert venues as Sirkus,
Nasa and most recently Faktorý to make
way for hotels, there is a lot of frustration
floating around 101.
One popular reaction is to start point-
ing—blame the city, blame the hotels,
blame the tourists themselves. But is col-
lective frustration ever appeased by blame?
And is acting out against "hotels" in general
any more effective than trying to shut down
the annoying little brother in the backseat
of the car? So, what is really going on?
Where do we look, where do we point? And
why is this happening?
PRO-HO(TELS)
On a basic level, it's a story of supply and
demand. Páll Hjaltason, the city chair of
the Environment and Planning Commit-
tee, says it would take an additional 250
new hotel rooms a year to match a steady
3% annual increase in overnight stays in
hotels. In the past year, Iceland has wit-
nessed a 15% increase. As of this year,
tourism has become the second largest
industry in Iceland, surpassed only by
fishing. And according to a study by Arion
bank, the number of incoming tourists is
expected to increase threefold between
now and 2015, threefold from the 727,000
visitors predicted to enter the country this
year. Compare that to the mere 383,000 re-
ported visitors less than a decade ago, in
2005, and it is clear that Iceland has to do
some major adapting. And quickly.
So how did this happen? In the years
leading up to the financial crash in 2008,
tourism accounted for around 4.4–4.7% of
Iceland’s total GDP. Iceland was considered
a luxury travel destination. High costs and
a relatively poor exchange rate deterred
most who longed to visit Iceland—Sigur
Rós’s tour-footage in ‘Heima’ would have
to do. In 2008, when the banks went sliding
down the slippery slope of economic col-
lapse, they brought the value of the krona
tumbling down with them. By September
2008, the króna had experienced a devas-
tating depreciation by nearly 80%, and not
quietly. With exchange rates now heav-
ily favouring incoming foreign currency,
the tourism industry began its voracious
expansion. A year later, by 2009, tourism
accounted for almost 6% of Iceland’s total
GDP.
Since then it has only continued to grow
at unprecedented rates. Between 2010 and
2011, the number of international visitors to
Iceland jumped from 488,600 to 565,600, a
16.6% increase. The following year that in-
creased again, by 18.9%, with 2012 seeing a
record 672,000 international visitors.
In order for growth of this magnitude
to occur, the hotel industry and tourism in
general had to be responsive. “Tourism will
continue to grow,” says Hildur Ómarsdót-
tir, the director of marketing for Icelandair
Hotels, “but I will never take it for granted.
It will continue to grow if we decide to make
it grow by continuing to enhance and im-
prove it. It is through massive marketing
efforts that this industry continues to ex-
pand."
The expansion isn't just physical, it's fis-
cal. “Tourism is a vital pillar of the Icelandic
economy. In fact, it is probably what saved
us from misery after the crash," says Reyk-
javík Economics Managing Director Mag-
nús Árni Skúlason. Magnús emphasises
the benefits of tourism to underdeveloped
areas in the downtown region. He notes the
potential of tourism to rejuvenate areas like
Hverfisgata and upper Laugavegur. “Upper
Laugavegur is not in a good state,” Mag-
nús says, “we saw great shops like Atmo, a
concept store for Icelandic designers, that
were not able to survive recently, even on
the main street in the main shopping dis-
trict in Reykjavík.” Tourists will help these
businesses survive the dark winter days by
flooding them with capital during the sum-
mer, Magnús argues.
HEALTHY GROWTH
On August 9, the city released its newly up-
dated Reykjavík Municipal Plan, which calls
for a concentration of hotel development in
the above mentioned Hlemmur area. The
plan is a total revision of the former gov-
ernment’s Municipal Plan for 2001–2024,
shifting the focus from expanding outward
into unused peripheral areas around Reyk-
javík to developing within the city’s current
limits. In fact, it is the first master plan for
the city that does not propose new subur-
ban areas at the outskirts of the city and if
it is carried out, more than 90% of all new
residential units until 2030 will be built in
the current urban centre.
The benefit of this approach, Páll Hjalta-
son says, is that it allows the city to focus
on maintaining infrastructure that already
exists within its municipalities rather than
on the construction of new areas to main-
tain. It also cuts down on traffic, as resi-
dents and services alike will be more cen-
trally located.
"It is very easy to pick on and see the neg-
ative side of change. People tend to do this
without necessarily looking at what they
are trying to preserve,” Hildur Ómarsdóttir,
the director of sales and marketing for Ice-
landair Hotels. says in regard to Icelandair’s
approved plans to build a 142-room hotel in
the block containing beloved cultural gems
such as the Heart Park and Faktorý. "To
build up the culture we must take what we
have and enhance it," she says. "I don't see
how we can preserve if we don't invest in
the infrastructure to maintain, further de-
velop, enhance, and improve."
The future Icelandair Hotel will refurbish
existing structures to house its guests—
maintaining, at the least, an aesthetic of
old-town charm. "I think it's a beautiful
thing that we can open up to cultures from
all over the world," Hildur says, "we should
welcome the fact the people want to come
here, that the streets can be more colourful,
and the culture more rich."
That said, there is a dominating concern
over the more literal loss of colour, with the
closure of vibrant cultural hubs like Heart
Park and Faktorý. Granted, destruction is
not an evil in itself. More often than not,
destruction breeds creation. Like a flower
garden, one has to uproot the old grass and
weeds, dig the garden, and turn the soil
before the new seeds can be planted. But
productivity takes space, and it takes time.
The problem with the hotel industry is that
it digs up places with established creative
foundations and replaces them with an in-
dustry based on flux, on temporary inhabit-
ants. Without a chance to establish itself,
the creative capacity of the space stag-
nates. It's like somebody is digging a hole
for fresh new crop of flowers to bloom, and
then filling it with cement.
BEYOND THE BOARD ROOM
Arnar Fells Gunnarsson is one third of the
managing team at Faktorý, a staple of Ice-
landic music venues that was recently shut
down because of its location on the Heart
Park property. He emphasises that his com-
plaints are not directed against the building
of hotels, but at the way the city is going
about doing it. "I’m not against changing
and building up of a city; that is a normal
thing," Arnar says, "but I don’t think it’s a
good idea to put all of the hotels in dead
centre downtown at the cost of culture." Ar-
nar is not the first to point out questionable
actions of the city regarding recent hotel
approvals.
Over the past decade, the Heart Park
property has changed hands from pri-
vate groups, to banks, to individuals. Each
unique owner had a unique agenda. Before
the 2007 economic crash, proposals to turn
the beloved garden into a seven-storey
shopping mall in the heart of downtown
had been set into motion. When the crash
came in 2007, the massive project could no
longer be properly funded, and the prop-
erty itself was turned over to the hands of
Landsbanki bank. Last year, the bank decid-
ed that it was done sitting on the property;
it was time to cash out.
With the skeletons of overly-ambitious
development projects like the office tow-
ers at Borgatún looming over Reykjavík,
the newly elected Best Party was hesitant
to hand the large chunk of property over to
any single investor. So it seemed, anyway.
They announced that the prime property
would be divided up amongst a number of
individual investors to prevent the develop-
ment of creating Borgatún-like creatures in
the central city. The City even ran an ad in
the local paper with the property divided,
encouraging investors to start laying their
claims.
When the property was in fact turned
over, however, the dispersal effort was qui-
etly abandoned. In the end, the City sold the
property in its entirety, paving the way for
Icelandair to plop a hotel on the pristine lot.
When that transaction was announced, Ar-
nar recalls feeling surprised that, well, no-
body seemed surprised.
WHO DO YOU WORK FOR
When it comes to private ownership of
publicly used lands, the city can only do so
much within their own limits. "I am a bit sur-
prised to see this development approved by
the current government", Arnar says, "but I
understand that they are caught between a
rock and a hard place. This has been sort of
an ‘ugly spot’ here and people have always
wanted to fix it up. Of course you can come
and fix it up," he says, "but we don't need a
five-storey hotel to do it."
Icelandic pop star Páll Óskar is a little
less forgiving than Arnar in his reaction
to the city's responsiveness to public
outcries. Páll is among the sceptics who
question whether or not the city has re-
ally done all that it can do in regard to pre-
serving these important public areas. "It's
like it doesn’t matter to the City. If 18,000
people protest the hotel on this very spot,
it doesn’t matter. If 3,000 people show up
in protest at Austurvöllur, if almost 300 Ice-
landic musicians protest that Nasa going
under, it doesn’t matter. And even with all
of the fierce articles that have been written
in the media, it doesn’t matter. That to me
is what's most devastating, that all of these
voices will be swept aside. Hotel it will be."
Advocates against the closure of music
venues such as Nasa worry that the city is
taking for granted the culture that draws the
tourists here in the first place. According to
an April 2013 report by the Icelandic Tourist
Board, 40% of visitors cited "culture and/or
history" as the most influential reason for
their visit to Iceland. "That forty percent
comes here for the musicians," Páll Óskar
elaborates, "not the movies, not the writers,
they come for the music. Isn't it peculiar to
close down concert venues like Nasa and
Faktorý to make room for a hotel for those
very same tourists to stay in?"
One of the possible measures within the
hands of government is to convince proper-
ty owners to commit pieces of their land to
the National Heritage Homes Association,
as was the case with the Nasa building and
the yellow house where Café Stofan now
sits. But although the structures will be
preserved, the culture that occupies them
today and in the past cannot.
TARGETING THE ARTS
It would be naive of the economist, the
builder, or the city planner, to assume that
the entire realm of human experience that
these spaces like Nasa and Heart Park have
offered can be boiled down to monetary
units. Because one private owner made a
payment to another private owner, they now
control not only the physical land in ques-
tion, but also everything that the land cur-
rently contains. Heart Park and Nasa serve
only as two outspoken representatives of
a greater collective of artists and creative
industries that have been displaced by the
"adaptation" of the city.
It is the nomadic characteristic of the
arts and music scenes that makes them re-
silient, and at the same time renders them
vulnerable. "I think the attitude toward mu-
sicians in Iceland has generally been 'do-
it-yourself, take care of your own shit,'"
Páll Óskar reflects. "The same discussion
comes up again and again—'why don't you
get a job'—indicating that being an artist is
not a job. As Iceland was originally a fish-
er's and a farmer's society, anything that
was not fishing or farming was not consid-
ered a job. So the thinking has deep roots."
Einar Örn, the current chair for the De-
partment of Culture and Tourism of the Best
Party, doesn’t agree. "I'm not worried about
the health of the Icelandic music scene,"
says Einar, who is also a founding member
of The Sugarcubes and one half of the ex-
perimental electronic duo Ghostigital. "Mu-
sicians are a historically resilient, nomadic
lot. Icelandic music will not be crushed by
the hotel industry. Nasa has been closed for
a year and a half, Sirkus for even longer, but
the scene is just as healthy as ever. There
will always be somewhere to play."
"To tie inspiration to a certain place is
wrong," Einar elaborates, "it's the people,
not the buildings, that do the creating.
Spaces are to be reused. Find something
else," he says, encouraging the artists dis-
placed by the recent closure of Faktorý to
be creative. “Be what you claim everybody
is saying that we are killing,” he says. “Take
on the devil, make it better."
In the meantime, artists around Reykja-
vík are not standing around.
Creative work continues within the con-
fines of 101 Reykjavík, as buildings are emp-
tied in slow anticipation of being turned
into hotels. Bands like Reykjavík!, Retro
Stefson, FM Belfast, Borko, Agent Fresco,
“In the
end, the
City sold
the prop-
erty in its
entirety,
paving the
way for
Icelandair
to plop a
hotel on
the pris-
tine lot.”
“‘40% of
tourists
say that
they come
here for
the cul-
ture,’ Páll
says”
26The Reykjavík Grapevine Issue 12 — 2013