1 Bid for wind corridor on waterfront site defeated
Una So, The Standard 25 August 2007

The Town Planning Board has rejected an environmental group's bid to keep a 10-meter-wide wind corridor and to reduce the plot ratio on reclaimed waterfront land at Hoi Fai Road.

The core of the application lay in residents' concern with the area's ventillation.

High-rises ranging from 34 to 60 stories already line the southwest Kowloon waterfront. Building another high-rise at Hoi Fai Road would block sea wind from reaching the hinterland and aggravate air pollution in the area, applicant Green Sense argued.

Three private residential buildings surrounding the 11,353-square-meter site are between 112 and 177 meters in height.

The group, represented by town planning expert Stanley Ng Wing-fai, proposed a reduction of the maximum domestic plot ratio of the site from 6.5 to five.

It also pushed for a height limit of 30 meters and a 10-meter-wide wind corridor at the northern part of the site.

The site's current building height restriction is 140 meters.

A Planning Department spokeswoman said the current plot ratio was suitable for residential needs.

While some board members were concerned about air ventilation, they said the applicant had not produced adequate data to prove the necessity of a wind corridor.

However, the board recommended the Building Department should look into air ventilation before giving building plans the green light.

The application for amendments to the Hoi Fai Road site was submitted on June 4, before the land was auctioned to Sun Hung Kai Properties for HK$5.56 billion on June 12.

Before the auction, a judicial challenge against high-rise development on the waterfront site was defeated due to lack of supporting data. The Building Department will decide on the submitted plan to build eight residential blocks before the end of the month.

Out of the 131 comments received during the three-week public consultation period, the sole opposition to Green Sense's bid came from the landowner, Smart Globe, a branch company of Sun Hung Kai Properties.

Ng expressed disappointment at the decision, saying it showed the board was on the side of the developer.

He said for the sake of Hong Kong's future, there must be a revamp of the town planning system.

Green Sense president Roy Tam Hoi-pong was also disappointed but said at least the Building Department was told to consider air ventilation before approving the plan.

Real estate tycoon Li Ka-shing of Cheung Kong (Holdings) warned on Thursday that conservation campaigns and calls for limits on high-rises could hurt government revenue and, eventually, the people of Hong Kong.


2 No bids to develop theme park on Ma Wan Island site fails to attract any tenders
Albert Wong, SCMP 25 August 2007

An ambitious tender for the development of a theme park the size of five soccer pitches in the south of Ma Wan island has received no bids during a two-month tender period, the Lands Department said yesterday.

High hopes for a theme park on the site have been held for almost a decade, but various plans for tourist attractions have yet to get off the ground.

The site was the proposed location of the HK$800 million Snow World project, which promised a world-class ski centre with Olympic-standard slopes.

When those plans found no interest, the government put the site up for tender in December 2002, while publicly proclaiming that it expected "strong interest from private companies both locally and overseas" to develop another theme park.

However, the tender period lapsed at noon yesterday for the latest 88,500 sq metre site in the southeast of the island, over which the Tsing Ma bridge is laid.

The tender document originally described its use as "recreational and/or tourism ... including entertainment activities" and other facilities.

A spokeswoman for the Lands Department said it would "review the tender conditions and see if better arrangements could be made".

Members of the surveying, planning and tourism industries said the short-term nature of the tender for five years and quarterly thereafter, was the most likely factor to have deterred investors.

Lawmaker for the architectural, surveying and planning constituency, Patrick Lau Sau-shing, noted that Hong Kong Disneyland's slow development would have made investors more cautious.

"If Disneyland, such a big brand name, is taking time to find its feet, how do you expect a new investor to make a profit in five years?" he said. "Even a hotel takes 10 years to make a profit."

The South China Morning Post reported last Wednesday that Hong Kong Disneyland was expected to struggle to achieve an attendance of 4 million in its second year of business, well below its first-year performance of 5.2 million, a daily average of less than 11,000, or about one-third of the park's 34,000 capacity.

Nicholas Brooke, former president of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, said the short-term tenancy period "said it all" to explain the absence of bids. "If you want to attract serious investment and serious players, you're going to have to offer longer terms than that," he said, suggesting tenancy of 20 to 30 years.

Mr Lau suggested the government talk to potential bidders first before setting tender conditions.