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1. Concerns over airflow choke KCRC project

1. Concerns over airflow choke KCRC project
NG KANG-CHUNG, SCMP 31 August 2005

Kowloon-Canton Railway Corp (KCRC) has postponed the tender of its $20 billion residential project at Nam Cheong station in Shamshuipo due to concerns over the effects the development will have on ventilation in the neighbourhood.

The plan was to build 10 blocks of juxtaposing 52-storey buildings on 4.62 hectares of land along the western Kowloon waterfront. The residential and commercial hub would offer 4,247 apartments and about 750,000 sq ft of office and shopping space.

The development was meant to be put up for tender this month, but noisy protests by local residents since late last year over the height and proximity of the blocks to their homes have derailed the KCRC's plan.

Bowing to the residents' pressure, the KCRC has commissioned the Imperial College London to study the impact of the tall buildings on air ventilation in inner Shamshuipo, which is cluttered with ageing, rundown blocks.

The project is now expected to be put up for tender by the end of this year, a source said.

It was scheduled to be completed in phases from 2009. Pre-sales of uncompleted units were expected in 2008.

"We appreciate the residents' concerns and are looking at ways to address them," a spokeswoman for the KCRC said. She added that the corporation was liaising with the government and was working on a new design. Options being considered included lowering the height of the buildings and scaling the project down to fewer blocks.

It is understood that the government might opt for minor amendments as building fewer flats might lead to wastage of the urban site.

Citing the 88-storey Two IFC as an example, Eddie Hui, professor of Polytechnic University's Department of Building and Real Estate, said, "Short is not necessarily beautiful. Sometimes, if we allow the developers to build a block taller, the developer can spare more open space on the ground level.

"If Two IFC had been built as three 30-storey blocks put together, that could have caused so-called wind screen effects," he said.

Poor ventilation among high-rise blocks was highlighted during the Sars crisis in 2003, when it was cited as a possible cause of the spread of germs. A subsequent government report recommended "the practicality of stipulating ventilation assessment as one of the considerations, similar to traffic and infrastructure capacities, for all major development or redevelopment proposals and in future planning".

But Mr Hui said the Town Planning Board cared "about plot ratio, density and traffic, but not the ventilation issue".

He said developers should also pay more attention to ventilation.

Chapter 11 of the Planning Department's Hong Kong Planning Standards and Guidelines highlights the importance of "breezeways", which can improve "the microclimate of urban environments" and "allow effective air movements into the urban area to remove gases, particulates and heat".

The guidelines also read: "Tall buildings along the waterfront should be avoided to allow sea breezes blowing into the city."

But how strictly guidelines are observed is another story. Some government planners privately admit they are not in some cases.

President of the Hong Kong Institute of Architects and Town Planning Board member Bernard Lim said the KCRC Nam Cheong project was endorsed during the production boom in 1999, when former chief executive Tung Chee-hwa announced his now-defunct plan to build 85,000 flats a year.

"Inevitably, officials would approve very tall buildings, and having them packed together like a great wall was hardly considered an issue. After all, you needed to make full use of land to [build] 85,000 flats a year," Professor Lim said.

Shamshuipo district councillor Wai Woon-nam, who led residents in the fight against the Nam Cheong project, said the inner parts of Shamshuipo could be choked off if the KCRC project went ahead.

"Of course, it is about supply and demand where people want to move in high-rise condominiums, which is often achieved through tearing down old blocks. It is good for developers but bad for residents living behind [the high-rises]."

A Housing, Planning and Lands Bureau spokeswoman would not comment on the project's redesign but said the bureau would keep in touch with the KCRC.