4 conservation options
On September 27, the Department of Construction of Dong Nai province proposed four options for preserving the ancient villa of Vo Ha Thanh (also known as Ong Phu's house) in Buu Long ward, Bien Hoa city.
Option 1: Relocating ancient villas, the State will spend money to hire experienced and capable units to carry out the relocation (referring to Hue city in 2022, relocating an ancient French-style villa over 100 years old with an area of 200m2, the relocation cost is about 2.4 billion VND).
However, with this option, the land behind the ancient villa is only 6m deep. Therefore, compensation and site clearance for the households behind must be carried out (an additional 300m2 of land is expected to be acquired), not to mention the legal procedures to carry out the clearance of this area.
Option 2: Straighten the riverside road. According to the Department of Construction, the riverside road encroaches on the old villa by 12.7m; the distance from the river embankment to the sidewalk of the road is 14.7m. Thus, the remaining distance from the edge of the embankment to the edge of the porch of the old villa still has enough distance to straighten the route, avoiding the old villa, the principle is to keep the road width of 24m along the entire route.
With a length of 650m, the unconstructed section is enough to ensure a soft curve, avoiding the villa, no sharp turns, no bottlenecks.
Option 3: Create a roundabout square surrounding the ancient villa. Based on option 2 mentioned above, re-plan the landscape to restore the ancient villa into a ceramic square (with the condition that the State requisitions the entire ancient villa to renovate it into a ceramic museum).
Option 4, different level traffic, combined with flower garden island surrounding the ancient villa.
This option creates additional land area to be recovered, and at the same time, costs about 200 billion VND more for the overpass and technical infrastructure works (not including additional land clearance costs when having to recover more land for the river route). In addition, it is necessary to adjust the route design plan, prepare and submit for approval the design adjustment dossier, adjust the planning, and generate land recovery procedures, so it will take at least 1.5 years.
Solutions are needed to preserve ancient villas.
Previously, the Provincial Party Standing Committee had expressed its opinion on keeping the villa to preserve and promote its cultural, historical and architectural values.
According to the Department of Construction of Dong Nai province, the location of the ancient villa Vo Ha Thanh is on the right side of the Dong Nai riverside road project, built in 1922 and completed in 1924 with 2 floors, stone foundation, reinforced concrete, tiled roof...
According to the assessment, the ancient villa Vo Ha Thanh has French architecture, the materials were imported from France in the early 20th century. This is a private ancient villa with ancient French architecture, built with materials transported from France, the only remaining in Bien Hoa city and one of the few ancient French villas still existing in Dong Nai (next to the ancient villa Suoi Tre) with the house structure still quite good.
This ancient villa has not yet been classified as a historical-cultural relic by a competent state agency.
Dong Nai Department of Construction recommends that Dong Nai Provincial People's Committee needs to find a solution to preserve the ancient villa of Vo Ha Thanh.
