The recently demolished Cambodian Red Cross building on Norodom Boulevard will be replaced by a supermarket and serviced apartments, the organization’s secretary-general, Mey Samedy, said Monday.
The crumbling French colonial-era building, which had been abandoned and suffered years of neglect, was leveled to raise money to expand the CRC’s more modern offices on Street 180, Mey Samedy said.
The organization’s current headquarters are overcrowded, he said.
“Nowadays a lot of foreign aid staff are working at the Red Cross headquarters,” he added.
Golden Harvest Co Ltd, a private Singaporean company, signed an agreement last year with the CRC to redevelop the site, Mey Samedy said. He did not reveal the length of the lease or the value of the transaction.
The demolished building was constructed in the early 20th century and was once the French military’s headquarters. Following Cambodia’s independence from France, the building housed the RCAF commander in chief’s headquarters, and it served the same function under Lon Nol’s military government, Mey Samedy said.
Following the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime in 1979, the building was taken over by the Red Cross, he said.
“It was built since before I was born in the 1930s,” he said.
Celebrating its 50th anniversary on Feb 18, the CRC—whose president is Bun Rany, wife of Prime Minister Hun Sen—raised nearly $2 million from the country’s political and business elite.
