1 Planning board backs SoHo owners' plan Plea for URA to shrink redevelopment project
Olga Wong, SCMP 25 July 2009

Confusion surrounds a project to redevelop Staunton Street after the Town Planning Board urged the government yesterday to consider shrinking the site to preserve five tenement buildings recently refurbished by owners.

Some buildings were only bought and refurbished after the Urban Renewal Authority announced the redevelopment plan in 2003. The owners asked board members to exclude their properties from the redevelopment area to preserve the character of the old community.

The board's request has prompted warnings from a lawmaker and the authority's non-executive director, who said there would be financial and legal implications because the authority has already started acquiring properties on the site in SoHo.

Under the plan, three residential blocks of six, 13 and 28 storeys will be built on three sites. There will be an open space of 920 square metres. Bridges Street Market and two buildings in Wing Lee Street and two in Staunton Street will be preserved.

In the board meeting yesterday, seven people owning 21 flats in five tenement buildings on a site where the 28-storey building will be built asked the board to exclude their properties from the redevelopment as they were newly refurbished.

The owners, who claim to own more than 60 per cent of the sites, proposed setting up an owners' committee for the buildings. They asked the authority to facilitate the renovation process and said the units already acquired could be sold after the renovation.

The project has aroused much controversy. The three small sites were once connected until Henderson Land won a judicial review in 2007, in which the developer was allowed to take away part of the site area and redevelop it into a residential building called CentrePoint.

The authority scaled down the redevelopment density last year by cutting 18 storeys off a planned 24-storey residential building to address community concern. As a result, instead of reaping HK$100 million under the original plan, the project was estimated to lose HK$170 million.

A Town Planning Board spokesman said board members were impressed by the owners' idea. Although the Planning Department showed support for the authority's plan, the board asked the department to consider excluding the tenements from the project.

The spokesman said the board would also seek legal advice since the authority had already acquired eight flats, accounting for about 25 per cent of the property interests of the site. "The redevelopment site has become fragmented after Henderson Land took part of it," he said. "Keeping the old tenement buildings would preserve the local character of the community."

Lawmaker Ip Kwok-him, a non-executive director of the authority, warned that the project could become financially unviable if the 28-storey building was given up.

"The building is the major source of income of the whole project, to make the preservation plan of four tenement buildings and a market more viable," he said, adding the board would also set a bad precedent by allowing owners to buy flats from redevelopment sites.

A source close to the URA said the authority had already acquired close to 50 per cent of the properties of all three redevelopment sites.

Katty Law Ngar-ning, a spokeswoman for the Central and Western Concern Group, welcomed the board's instruction. "Keeping the old buildings will reduce the living density and keep the social network."

A spokesman for the authority said the redevelopment plan fulfilled planning requirements and was supported by the Planning Department.