1 West Kowloon hub empowered to cover costs
Una So, The Standard 11 September 2007

Una So, The Standard 11 September 2007

The future West Kowloon cultural district authority will have the right to run commercial enterprises to pay for its own operational costs, sources revealed yesterday.

The government will inject up to HK$25 billion into the proposed authority, which also will have the right to run its commercial investments.

On the eve of the project's consultative paper being presented to the Legislative Council, members from the arts community called for the inclusion of a cultural think-tank in the authority, to boost the art hub's strategic cultural development.

Danny Yung Ning-tsun, a consultative committee member and founder of local performing arts group Zuni Icosahedron, said what the art hub needs is a holistic approach to culture and arts development in the form of a cultural think-tank.

Yung has repeatedly proposed to the government that research be carried out on Hong Kong's role in international cultural development.

The answer he has received time and again is that this can wait until the authority is established.

"This is an egg and chicken issue," Yung said. "How the authority is set up will have a direct effect on its operation. We need people with global perspective and cultural knowledge in strategic planning to do this."

Shanghai, Singapore, Tokyo and Kwangju, South Korea, are competing to become the top arts hub in the region, he said.

Kwangju has already done research to identify ways to build creative industries before any structural hardware is built, Yung said. Tokyo has formed an arts council.

"It would be naive of us not to study it carefully before we start," he said.

Ko Chi-sum, theater veteran and member of the performing arts and tourism advisory group under the consultative committee, said he is satisfied with the report, which has incorporated all the suggestions given in terms of the capacity of performing venues needed.

He said the public's interest in performance has risen greatly in recent years, and the present capacity of performing arts venues is now inadequate.

The combined capacity of theater seats under the proposed plan will be 37 percent more than the total seats available in Hong Kong at present.

According to suggestions, the cultural district will have 15 venues, 12 of which will be built under the first stage and will start operating by 2016.

Those 12 venues include an opera house, a Chinese opera center and a chamber music hall.

A 2000-seat grand theater and two 800-seat medium-sized theaters will be built under phase two, which is likely to be completed by 2026.

2 Cultural district plans attacked over open space Plea by West Kowloon activists
Olga Wong, SCMP 11 September 2007

Activists monitoring the West Kowloon cultural district project will  today urge the government to scrap plans for a residential development at the site and instead push for a "high-quality" open space.

Just one day before the government announces its plans for the cultural development, pressure groups, including Local Action and Community Cultural Concern, will present their own plan at a joint press conference.

The groups said a park was originally planned for the 40-hectare site but it had been replaced with scattered open spaces which may not be easy to access.

Meanwhile, Designing Hong Kong and the People's Panel on West Kowloon plan to offer their own concepts for cultural development at the site during the three-month public consultation, which begins tomorrow.

Chu Hoi-dick, a core member of Local Action, said that during the 1990s 300 hectares of reclaimed land at West Kowloon was intended to alleviate the lack of open space in the district.

According to a consultation document prepared by the Planning Department in 1994, the waterfront site was reclaimed to address problems such as the severe shortage of open space and the high concentration of low-income and elderly households in need of affordable local housing.

The document proposed a park of more than 20 hectares at the southern tip of West Kowloon. But the plan was completely changed in 1998, when former chief executive Tung Chee-hwa announced the proposal to develop a massive arts hub.

Secretary for Development Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor told a legislative meeting this year that the 20-hectare open space would still be available, but it might be on podiums or rooftops instead of on the ground.

The government also prefers the project to be financially self-sustaining, with HK$25 billion in planned revenue to be generated from on-site residential and commercial developments.

Questioning the government's approach to the project, Mr Chu said: "We do not want residential and office developments blocking the harbour front. The land should be returned to the public for an accessible and high-quality open space."

With a current shortfall of 9 hectares of open space in West Kowloon, according to the government's own planning guidelines, plans for residential and large-scale commercial developments should be scrapped and more money should be injected into the project.

"The government did not honour its promise to relieve the densely populated areas with reclaimed land. Instead, the land is disconnected from the old areas," Mr Chu said, adding that the government had made a profit of more than HK$50 billion from the sale of West Kowloon land for luxury residential developments in recent years.

He said that according to estimates by some surveyors, the government would pocket an extra HK$80 billion if the remaining seven parcels of land in West Kowloon were sold.

Mirana Szeto May, spokeswoman for Community Cultural Concern, said the group had invited local and overseas professionals to produce an alternative plan, in consultation with the public, to be submitted to the government by the end of the year.

Paul Zimmerman, convenor of Designing Hong Kong, said a large piece of open space should be reserved at ground level, and the project's scale should be reduced if facilities at City Hall and the cultural centre were to be upgraded.

Park zoned back

1991 Planning Department proposes in its Metroplan that reclaimed land at West Kowloon be used to alleviate the stress of densely populated areas in the district, and a park should be provided for residents
1992 Town Planning Board approves the outline zoning plan in which a 20-hectare park is designated on reclaimed land at the southern tip of West Kowloon
1994 Planning Department provides for a major urban park in the south of West Kowloon in its "West Kowloon Development Statement", to alleviate the lack of open space in the area.
1998 Plans for a cultural district on reclaimed land at West Kowloon are announced by the then chief executive, Tung Chee-hwa, in his policy address
2003 Town Planning Board rezones the 20-hectare open-space area into an area for cultural and commercial development
2007 Secretary for Development Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor says 20 hectares of open space is still available, but some could be placed on podiums of residential and commercial development

Olga Wong