HONG KONG | Historic Preservation Development News [Archive] - Page 2

hkskyline

December 16th, 2009, 11:01 AM

Former owner of King Yin Lei mansion pays HK$58 million to build houses next door
16 December 2009
South China Morning Post

The former owner of historic King Yin Lei mansion in Mid-Levels has paid HK$57.99 million to the government for a new site to build houses after surrendering the monument site.

The unidentified owner paid the full market difference between the land values of the two sites, the Development Bureau said.

The neighbouring sites on Stubbs Road are the same size and plot ratio, meaning they share the same development potential. The owner will be allowed to build five three-storey houses on the new lot, now a man-made slope.

Surveyors say the premium may reflect the difference in views and in the property-market situations over time. Charles Chan Chiu-kwok, managing director of surveying firm Savills, said assessment of land premiums usually included a range of factors, such as the location and shape of the site, which affects the building layout and thus the view from flats, and the ease of preparing the ground.

But Pang Siu-kei, another surveyor, said that given the proximity of the two sites and their similar development restrictions, it was hard to understand why there was a difference in value. "The only reason I can think of is the current booming property market making land prices higher than one or two years ago."

The bureau said the premium was reached in accordance with established procedures, without giving specifics. The government now owns the declared monument.

The former owner's attempt to deface the mansion in 2007 initially escaped the government's attention, but the work was called to a halt when the government declared it a provisional monument. The status was confirmed last year, and the owner agreed to surrender the site in exchange for one next to it.

The former owner will continue to finance and execute the mansion's restoration work, which is expected to be completed by the end of next year. Until the mansion is properly restored, the owner cannot sell, rent or mortgage the new houses in the new lot.

The government will then launch a tender to invite commercial organisations to submit proposals for reusing the mansion.

Separately, China Resources Property planned to redevelop the low block of its headquarters in Wan Chai into a six-star hotel, company managing director Winson Chow said. The six-storey block will be turned into a hotel tower of 18 storeys or more providing about 100 guest rooms. The exhibition hall that the block houses will remain.

Chow said the hotel would provide conference and exhibition facilities because there is a demand in the district. The company has submitted a proposal to the Development Opportunities Office, set up this year under the Development Bureau.

If the application is successful, the hotel is to open in 2015. The company is retrofitting its 25-year-old office tower with green features to cut its water and energy consumption, at a cost of HK$600 million.

hkskyline

December 30th, 2009, 07:57 AM

Dragon Garden owner wants status upgraded
19 December 2009
South China Morning Post

The owner of the city's largest private garden, the 60-year-old Dragon Garden in Sham Tseng, wants officials to upgrade its heritage status because of what he says are inadequacies in the government's appraisal.

Dr Lee Shiu, son of the garden's founder, philanthropist Lee Iu-cheung, made a submission to the Antiquities Advisory Board yesterday pointing out 21 items in the official appraisal of the garden's value that he says need clarification and elaboration. He has asked for the grade-two status of the site to be raised to grade one.

The submission, prepared by architectural researchers at Chinese University, is part of Lee's plan to seek matching funds from the government to turn the eight-hectare garden into a conservation project for community use.

About HK$30 million will be needed to restore the site on Castle Peak Road.

The submission listed alleged inadequacies in the official appraisal, released in March, elaborating on the founder's extensive social contribution and the architectural significance of various parts of the garden.

For example, it said, the appraisal failed to describe the many details of the pavilions and other buildings, which draw reference and inspiration from the Summer Palace in Beijing and Chinese calligraphy.

It also failed to mention the changing room and the swimming pool, the first structures erected in the garden, which had served as a place for social gatherings for guests, including colonial governors and the local elite.

Cynthia Lee Hong-yee, the founder's granddaughter, said: "One important factor about Dragon Garden that needs highlighting {hellip} is grandfather's pioneering concept of sustainable development in the 1950s."

Recycled granite blocks and glass bottles were used as building materials, and a water catchment collected rain water for irrigation.

Lee Shiu invited board members to visit the garden and said he was proud to be requesting an upgrade.

"We note in the news that over 70 private owners have requested their heritage properties be downgraded," he said. "We find it such a shame that not many Hong Kong people take pride in their own heritage."

The Antiquities Advisory Board will discuss in the coming months proposals from owners to delist or upgrade historic buildings.

Apart from Dragon Garden, there have been calls from owners or members of the public for 96 buildings to be given higher grades. Some 72 owners have requested delisting.

webuggshoe

December 31st, 2009, 08:17 AM

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hkskyline

January 3rd, 2010, 04:15 AM

Exhibition introduces Conserving Central projects
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Government Press Release

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The Commissioner for Heritage's Office of the Development Bureau is jointly staging an exhibition in Central with the Central and Western District Council to publicise the eight innovative projects of Conserving Central.

The exhibition will be held from today (December 31) until February 12 at the main concourse, podium level 1, ifc mall, Central.

The Secretary for Development, Mrs Carrie Lam, and Chairman of the Central and Western District Council Mr Chan Tak-chor officiated at the exhibition's opening ceremony today.

Mrs Lam said that the Conserving Central initiative, unveiled by the Chief Executive in his 2009-10 Policy Address, built on the Government's commitment and efforts in recent years on harbourfront enhancement and heritage conservation. The eight projects aim to preserve many of the social, historical and architectural features in Central while adding new life and vibrancy to the area.

"These eight projects are the beginning rather than the end of Conserving Central. We welcome similar contributions from private owners in the Central District and we will identify opportunities for more greening and greater connectivity," she said.

Mrs Lam expressed gratitude to the Central and Western District Council for its support and pledged to continue working with the District Council in taking forward these projects.

Mr Chan applauded the Conserving Central initiative which had fully respected the district's history and preserved its cultural characteristics. The District Council would fully support all the projects.

Apart from exhibition panels introducing the eight projects, the exhibition also featured a large 3-D model showing all the historic buildings and monuments in Central District.

The eight projects are:

* New Central Harbourfront
* Central Market
* The Central Police Station Compound
* Police Married Quarters Site at Hollywood Road
* Central Government Offices Complex
* Murray Building
* Former French Mission Building
* Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui Compound

Details about Conserving Central are also available at the website of Development Bureau: (www.devb.gov.hk).

hkskyline

January 18th, 2010, 04:41 PM

Auditorium proposed for under school ruins
Groups fear archaeological relics will be destroyed by Development Bureau's plan
13 January 2010
South China Morning Post

A government proposal to build an auditorium underneath a site of archaeological interest in Central has raised fears that valuable relics will be destroyed.

Critics are also asking why such a specific proposal has been put forward when the government has yet to invite proposals from interested organisations on how to use the site.

The Development Bureau's proposal comes ahead of a tender for revitalising the two former Hollywood Road married police quarters blocks on Aberdeen Street for creative industries, an initiative announced by Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen in his policy address in October.

The bureau's suggestion will be discussed by the Town Planning Board on Friday. In a paper submitted to the board, the bureau suggests creating 5,000 square metres of floor space in addition to the 15,000 sq metres in the two existing blocks.

The extra floor space would come from a multifunction courtyard between the two blocks, a sky bridge linking the blocks, a "rehearsal auditorium" with a sunken compartment underneath the courtyard, and space for displaying some of the foundations of the historic Central School.

Dr Sun Yat-sen, founder of modern China, studied at the school before it moved to the Aberdeen Street site. The school was founded in 1862, moved to Aberdeen Street in 1889 and was demolished in 1948 to make way for the city's first police quarters.

Its foundations lay unnoticed until 2007, when the Antiquities and Monuments Office, under public pressure, began an investigation.

The excavation revealed relics scattered around the site. Underneath the courtyard - the site of the proposed auditorium - are the remains of the west and east verandahs of the school's basement floors.

The government does not mention in the paper whether construction of the auditorium would damage the relics. It only says some of the additional space will be used to display them.

William Meacham, a former chairman of the Hong Kong Archaeological Society, said construction work would definitely destroy some of the relics and officials should make it clear why they wanted to do so.

He said that in some countries, if relics were found to be not so valuable - for example, not visually educating - they could be destroyed in redevelopment after being recorded.

"But the question of whether it is valuable is up to the community, not archaeologists, to answer," said Meacham.

Roger Ho Yao-sheng, a resident who campaigned to push officials to excavate the site, said the relics were rare archaeological findings discovered in the urban centre and should not be destroyed. He was not convinced there was a need for more space, as he felt the two buildings should provide enough.

The convenor of the Central and Western Concern Group, Katty Law Ngar-ning, who also joined the campaign, said she wanted to know why officials suggested such a specific facility ahead of the tender. She urged officials to explain the purpose of their proposal and whether it would harm the relics.

hkskyline

February 3rd, 2010, 07:24 PM

A fine romance: sample the world on a plate in Tsim Sha Tsui
7 January 2010
SCMP

It is for this beautiful harbour view that I chose this Tsim Sha Tsui location for Spoon," Alain Ducasse says as he gazes through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the restaurant.

The chef, whose name is synonymous with French haute cuisine, selected the InterContinental in Tsim Sha Tsui to open the Hong Kong branch of Spoon back in 2003 because, "This hotel always focuses on food lovers. It's great to partner with someone who understands my vision - that's how I made my decision."

Last year, Ducasse decided it was time for a change. The interior was refurbished, tableware and uniforms were changed and the menu evolved to turn Spoon into what he calls "today's restaurant".

"After six years, the market has changed," he says. "Previously, we served international ethnic cuisine but now the food is more contemporary French. We can't do the Paris version [of Spoon] in Hong Kong because it simply doesn't work. It remains a Spoon concept - just spinning off in distinctive variations. Essentially, Spoon is adapting itself to ever-changing consumption patterns and the guests' actual expectations."

Down the road from the InterContinental, the hotel formerly known as the Miramar also underwent a metamorphosis. Henderson Land's Martin Lee Ka-shing took over and hired Hollywood lifestyle guru Colin Cowie to transform the ageing Miramar into The Mira.

Award-winning Singaporean chef Justin Quek was invited to open Whisk on the hotel's fifth floor.

"I know Martin Lee," he says. "He tried my food in Taipei and asked me to help in his hotel here."

The chef, who sold his three restaurants in Shanghai and has two eateries in Taipei, is a consultant for Whisk as well as the French Window at the IFC in Central.

Whisk, which opened in September, has already become known among food lovers for dishes such as suckling pig with red wine and spice sauce and baked miso-marinated cod, and the chef is happy to customise menus for private parties. Quek is classically trained in French cuisine, but says he cannot be compared with other French chefs.

"I am different from Ducasse and [Pierre] Gagnaire," he says. "I am Asian and don't like to use too much butter and cream."

Another new Tsim Sha Tsui fine-dining hot spot is the colonial 1881 Heritage building, near the Star Ferry. Businessman Francis Yip Chi-hung opened DG Cafe and Wine Cuisine in the former marine police headquarters.

"The 1881 Heritage management team contacted me after trying my first DG wine cellar at a private club in Jardine's Lookout," Yip says.

Although he's new to the food and beverage trade, Yip says he was encouraged by wealthy friends to open the space for people to enjoy fine wines. The restaurant serves mostly Italian food, but also Asian dishes as a nod to the sailors who used to dine in the space.

Above DG Cafe is Hullett House, run by the Aqua Restaurant Group. Named after 19th century English scholar Richmond William Hullett, the space was transformed by Aqua founder David Yeo into five restaurants and bars, a souvenir shop and a 13-suite boutique hotel.

General manager Phil Oakden says: "Our concept is to match the expectations of Hong Kong people - everyone can go to Hullett House, although we know we can't be all things to all people. Stables Grill is for casual dining. St George is for an extravagant romantic dining experience, whereas Mariners' Rest exemplifies a British pub serving food like fish and chips and beer. Loong Toh Yuen has an outdoor courtyard which we see as the perfect place to put a Chinese restaurant. The Parlour is an all-day concept serving English breakfast, elegant high tea and dinner."

Philippe Orrico, a protege of Gagnaire and former chef at Pierre at the Mandarin Oriental, was hired as executive chef at St George.

"I decided to do a menu that's not too French but more open to world cuisines full of modern flavours," he says.

"Sweets are the only traditional items. I combine ingredients from my Parisian suppliers with interesting local produce. I try to find a balance between classic and modern French."

The chef hopes diners will be enticed by the novel dishes.

"My tasting menu changes according to the seasons," he says. "Dishes are partly Gagnaire influences and partly my ideas."

Although these Tsim Sha Tsui restaurants evince a gastronomic evolution, one of the oldest fine-dining spots - Gaddi's, at the Peninsula Hotel - is changing more discreetly. The restaurant opened in 1953 and still retains its opulent old-fashioned French interior. But British chef David Goodridge, who has been at Gaddi's since 2005, has been transforming the menu into his private gourmet fantasy.

"To sit down and create an entirely new menu is almost impossible, so every six weeks we change the items or update the a la carte dishes with seasonal ingredients," says Goodridge. "We stick to European food, import all ingredients from Europe and work in accordance with European seasons. Produce and fresh seafood come in live every day."

Goodridge, who worked with Raymond Blanc at Le Manoir Aux Quat' Saisons, says he has a more personalised cooking style, rather than having signature dishes.

"My fundamental cooking method stays the same but my dishes change," he says. "My sole signature dish on the Gaddi's menu is the marinated goose liver confit with candied rhubarb and hazelnut dressing. Good taste is my mantra - most important is flavour, followed by texture and techniques leading to the end result. I start with a basic French technique but how I adapt it marks my character as a chef."

As Goodridge looks at all the new fine-dining restaurants opening near The Peninsula, he is confident that Gaddi's will retain its top ranking.

"It's great to have competition because it makes us perform," he says. "Complacency is not good. Instead, my challenge is to entice new guests [across the harbour] from Hong Kong Island. More restaurants will draw more people, so there will be more vibrancy in Tsim Sha Tsui. We need to look forward. The Peninsula has an amazing history and we will try to generate the next generation of regulars for the next 20 years. Our philosophy is not about volume - our guarantee to offer the finest quality is what sets us apart."

Foodies are already anticipating the resurrection of Hugo's, at the Hyatt Regency on Nathan Road, that closed in 2006. The hotel reopened in October on Hanoi Road and it will be fascinating to see whether Hugo's will stay true to its original blueprint or get a makeover.

Dine with the stars - a guide to top-nosh tables

Hullett House 2A Canton Rd, Tsim Sha Tsui, hulletthouse.com The Parlour - all-day dining and bar, tel: 3988 0101 Stables Grill - casual dining, tel: 3988 0104 Loong Toh Yuen - Cantonese food, tel: 3988 0107 Mariners' Rest - British pub, tel: 3988 0103 St George (pictured) - modern European fine dining, tel: 3988 0220

DG Cafe and Wine Cuisine Shop 208, Level 2, 1881 Heritage, 2A Canton Rd, Tsim Sha Tsui, tel: 2604 1881, dgcafe.com

Whisk 5/F The Mira hotel Hong Kong, 118 Nathan Rd, Tsim Sha Tsui, tel: 2315 5999, themirahotel.com

Gaddi's 1/F, The Peninsula, Salisbury Rd, Tsim Sha Tsui, tel: 2315 3171

Spoon by Alain Ducasse Lobby Level, InterContinental Hong Kong, 18 Salisbury Rd, Tsim Sha Tsui, tel: 2313 2256

hkskyline

February 12th, 2010, 01:26 PM

Preserving a place in our hearts for our not-so-haughty cuisine
10 February 2010
SCMP

Heritage is something that a society inherits from previous generations. It is up to that society to then preserve this heritage for future generations. It is a vital part of the life and unique character of a city like Hong Kong. When we refer to intangible heritage we mean the collective memory of the people, which reflects our lifestyles. I would like to see the cha chaan teng [Hong Kong tea cafe] added to the list of the city's intangible heritage, because it is a reflection of the lifestyle of Hongkongers and is a unique feature of the city.

The culture and traditions of a society are regarded as part of its intangible heritage and that is why the cha chaan teng is a suitable candidate. After the second world war, these cafe-style restaurants provided Western cuisine. Later this was expanded to include traditional Chinese dishes. These restaurants are known for their varied and affordable menus.

When looking back at their history, you are given a glimpse of the lives of Hong Kong people from lower-income groups. Despite their financial constraints, they wanted the chance to try Western cuisine. Their role has changed since those early days. Now Hong Kong people see them as efficient places for tea or a quick meal. The food is ordered, served and paid for at great speed, which is a unique part of the eating culture of this city. Generally you will get your dish within 10 minutes. Customers pay at the counter rather than giving money to the waiter, and diners also share tables.

These restaurants reflect the changes in society and represent a crossover of historic and modern lifestyles. A city without its own distinctive characteristics is a mediocre place. The cha chaan teng is unique to Hong Kong. There are similar restaurants on the mainland and in Chinatowns in other countries. But they have nothing to do with the unique eating culture of this city. I can see no reason why the cha chaan teng should not join the list of Hong Kong's intangible cultural heritage.

Wong Yin-ting, Tsz Wan Shan

hkskyline

February 26th, 2010, 08:57 PM

Calls to preserve Wing Lee Street mount after movie's success
23 February 2010
South China Morning Post

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The Urban Renewal Authority will press ahead with redevelopment of Wing Lee Street in Sheung Wan despite calls for preservation spurred by an award-winning film made in the street.

The authority said the ambience of the street, where three of 12 tenement buildings will be kept intact, would be preserved.

It was responding after filmmakers Alex Law Kai-yui and Mabel Cheung Yuen-ting, who won the Crystal Bear award at the Berlinale festival with their movie Echoes of the Rainbow, called for the street's preservation.

Cheung, the producer, said Wing Lee Street was the only place in Hong Kong that could have been used for the film, set in 1960s Hong Kong.

If it had already been demolished, they would have had to go to Malaysia or Guangzhou to find the right setting. "That would've been ridiculous," she said.

The authority said the project already struck a sensible balance between preservation and development. The Town Planning Board's public consultation on the plan - under which nine of the 12 tenement blocks will be demolished and redeveloped into six-storey row houses similar in style to the tenement buildings - ends today.

The street is famous for its terrace, an open space in front of the tenement buildings, where neighbours and children can get together and relax.

Connie Yam, who grew up in Wing Lee Street and now operates a printing shop on the ground floor of No7, says the street is full of childhood memories. "I would like to see it preserved. We used to play mahjong and set up our stoves outside the buildings," she said.

A Form Five student, named Wing, said the area was a historic gem in a concrete jungle. "I love the place despite the bad hygiene conditions," she said, adding her parents rented a room for their family of three in one of the tenement buildings.

The owner of an old-style printing company, Mrs Lee, who has been working at the street for more than 30 years, said business had been getting worse in recent years. "I'm emotionally attached to this place but most neighbours have gone. It's not bad to get some compensation from the authority as it will improve our retired life."

Kwong Haap-pak, a tenant living in a newly-refurbished tenement building close to Wing Lee Street, said preservation might not be the best option. "Our building has a nice appearance but the structural conditions are getting worse inside."

The authority said a study showed the buildings were dilapidated. Renovating one flat would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to an assessment on refurbishing tenement buildings in Kwun Tong.

A spokeswoman for the Central and Western Concern Group urged the authority to protect all buildings in the street. "It's meaningless if its architectural integrity is destroyed."

hkskyline

March 11th, 2010, 11:31 AM

Battle lines drawn to save Wing Lee Street tenements
8 March 2010
South China Morning Post

First it was "Wedding Card Street" in Wan Chai - now the battle against the Urban Renewal Authority wrecking ball is being waged at Wing Lee Street in SoHo, Central.

Two weeks before a redevelopment project for the area is due to be discussed at the Town Planning Board, Katty Law Ngar-ning, leading the Central and Western Concern Group, is making a final effort to save the old tenements from demolition.

The film Echoes of the Rainbow, which was shot in Wing Lee Street and won a Crystal Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival last month, has revived people's interest in the old street, and fuelled Law's campaign. "People should not just come to take photos. I hope they'll come to sign our petition," she said.

Law, working with several owners who recently renovated the buildings in the redevelopment area, said the authority should withdraw the redevelopment project so that the old street scape and characteristic tenements could remain.

"If these tenements are refurbished properly, they can make attractive properties for rent or sale. There are successful examples in the SoHo district which derive good profits for owners," she said.

Law plans to write to the Antiquities Advisory Board to press for an assessment of the heritage value of the tenements in Wing Lee Street.

She said if, ideally, the authority gave in, the government should set a height restriction on such streets so that private owners would choose to renovate instead of redevelop the buildings.

The Town Planning Board has so far received 449 submissions from individuals, most of them objecting to the redevelopment. On Facebook, a group called Stop the Urban Renewal Authority from Destroying SoHo in Hong Kong has drawn more than 1,700 supporters.

An Urban Renewal Authority spokesman said the plan would remain unchanged before the Town Planning Board vets it on March 19. "The community should not make a drastic, emotional decision [asking the authority to withdraw] because of promotion gimmicks for a movie," he said.

The authority has so far acquired 40 per cent of property interests in the redevelopment area.

Its plan, covering three small sites surrounded by Staunton Street, Wing Lee Street and Aberdeen Street, has been amended several times since 2003, including on height reductions.

Nine of 12 post-war tenement buildings in Wing Lee Street, dubbed the Thirty Stone Houses, will be torn down and replaced with buildings of a similar scale. Row houses from four to 12 storeys high will replace the blocks on sloping Shing Wong Street to preserve the terrace landscape. Another two tenements in Staunton Street will be preserved and the others replaced by a 20-storey tower.

Connie Yam Oi-ting, who has run a family printing business in Wing Lee Street for more than 30 years, said she was ambivalent about the redevelopment. "As a resident and tenant, of course I want to see the houses preserved. This is such a cosy quiet place you can't find elsewhere in Central. But I also understand my landlord is waiting to sell the property to make money for her retirement," she said.

hkskyline

March 15th, 2010, 04:40 PM

U-turn on 'star' street
The Standard
Monday, March 15, 2010

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In a sign the government is getting street smart, a top official has revealed she is considering halting the controversial acquisition of a street with "star power."

Because of the changing views of the community, Development Secretary Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor says she may halt the acquisition of Central's Wing Lee Street - which featured in the recent award-winning movie Echoes of the Rainbow.

In an interview with The Standard's sister newspaper Sing Tao Daily, Lam also hinted at further discussions with senior management of the Urban Renewal Authority on the need to demolish old buildings on the street while taking into consideration the requirements of landlords and tenants.

Lam is the most senior government official to hint that changes may be made to the street's development plan and the possibility that - for the first time - an acquisition project may be halted.

The authority had been adamant it would press ahead with redevelopment despite an earlier plea from Echoes of the Rainbow director Alex Law Kai-yui that the whole street be preserved.

The quaint street, comprising 12 tong-laus, or traditional Chinese tenement buildings, was used as the location for the 1960s-era movie, which won the Crystal Bear award for best feature film at the Berlin Film Festival last month.

Lam said that when the authority released a revised proposal to keep three tong-laus and redevelop the rest in late 2008, the feedback was positive. "But surprisingly, society has
changed its views and people are now insisting on conserving all 12 tong-laus," Lam said.

Lam urged the public to be less aggressive and emotional as Wing Lee Street is only a part of the redevelopment project, which comprises three sites.

The authority has so far secured 40 percent of the ownership of premises in the area but as the deadline for owners to reply has not expired, there may be legal implications should the resumption be halted ahead of time, Lam said.

The authority's plan for the Staunton Street-Wing Lee Street area is still pending approval from the Town Planning Board. It also does not have any partner from the private sector as yet.

In November 2008, the authority suggested that a proposed 24-story building behind Bridges Street Market at the corner of Shing Wong and Wing Lee streets be shrunk to six stories. It also proposed lowering the plot ratio.

The revised project was expected to result in losses of HK$170 million because of the drastic drop in the number of flats from 216 to 130.

Since Lam took over as development secretary, she has responded quickly to the public's conservation needs.

In September 2007, she moved to quell public outrage when demolition work began at King Yin Lei, a traditional Chinese-style mansion at 45 Stubbs Road, Wan Chai.

The government later exchanged a plot of land with the owner to preserve the 1937 mansion.

Meanwhile, about 10 conservationists gathered at Wing Lee Street yesterday calling for its preservation.

"The tong-laus are very precious and all 12 should be preserved. Keeping the last few units on the street would just be a token consolation," Central and Western Concern Group convener Katty Law Ngar-ning said.

hkskyline

March 23rd, 2010, 09:39 AM

URA members question decision on saving Wing Lee Street
18 March 2010
South China Morning Post

Urban Renewal Authority board members said the authority's new proposal to preserve Wing Lee Street in Sheung Wan was rushed and there had been no discussion of the rationale behind it.

On Tuesday, URA chairman Barry Cheung Chun-yuen announced a new alternative to preserve Wing Lee Street, under which all its 12 tenements would be spared demolition. The original plan, which involved preserving only three tenements, was to have been discussed by the Town Planning Board tomorrow.

URA board members said a meeting of its conservation committee on March 2 agreed to push forward with the original plan. They said the authority's management had then issued them a paper on Monday, and asked them to decide immediately whether or not to authorise the management to submit the alternative proposal to preserve all the blocks.

"[At the meeting] everyone agreed the buildings did not much have character," board member Wong Kwok-kin said. "And the site does not carry deep historic value. So we agreed some development and revitalisation would be enough."

Wong questioned whether the decision to change the plan was linked to a film, Echoes of the Rainbow, which was shot on the street and won an award at the Berlin International Film Festival last month. He also asked by what standards the decision was made.

Another board member, Tanya Chan, who had proposed saving the whole street, said there was no follow-up after she received the paper on the alternative plan. "The details were not known to me until Tuesday," she said. The alternative was a big change from the original plan and a URA board meeting should have been held before the new proposal was handed to the Town Planning Board.

The alternative is seen as a bow to pressure from the public and conservationists to preserve the street, the last complete street of tong lau - tenements from the early post-war years that were once very common.

A URA spokesman said the alternative was an extension to the original plan.

The URA management held that it should submit a feasible and well-received alternative to the Town Planning Board after reviewing the situation early this month, the spokesman said. The management asked the board for authorisation to handle the case flexibly because there was an urgent need for them to come up with an alternative, which would involve a lot technical decisions, before tomorrow, when the Town Planning Board was to discuss the original plan. It had received authorisations from most board members, he said.

The government and the authority deny the plan marks a U-turn.

The authority has bought half the 24 property interests in Wing Lee Street but will not buy any more if the alternative plan is adopted. Owners of the nine tenements not in URA hands will be asked to preserve and refurbish them.

hkskyline

April 11th, 2010, 08:38 AM

Heritage activist wants to preserve Central for the people, not the developers
5 April 2010
SCMP

It is unlikely that tranquil Wing Lee Street and the 12 tenement houses standing on it for more than half a century would have escaped the Urban Renewal Authority's bulldozers if film producer Mabel Cheung Yuen-ting had not made a public appeal for their conservation.

Cheung said the street in Sheung Wan was the only place in the city she could use for her film, Echoes of the Rainbow, that was set in 1960s Hong Kong.

But before Cheung came along, a housewife turned conservationist was already working tirelessly to protect the houses from being demolished for lucrative redevelopment. Katty Law Ngar-ning started a movement to preserve old Central five years ago. And for more than two years, she and fellow activists have focused their efforts on preserving Wing Lee Street's charms.

During the shooting of her film, Cheung joined their group, the Central and Western District Concern Group, to lobby for the street's conservation.

Bounded by Ladder Street, Bridges Street and Shing Wong Street, Wing Lee Street is known for its terrace, an open space in front of the tenement buildings, where neighbours and children get together and relax. The terrace was a typical engineering innovation in old Hong Kong during construction of dwellings in the hilly Central and Sheung Wan districts.

While most of the terraces in the neighbourhood remain, the original buildings have long been pulled down for high-rise development, leaving Wing Lee Street and its 12 tenement houses just as it was - a rare feature in contemporary Central.

Law, the group's convenor, lobbied district councillors to hold community meetings to demand that the Urban Renewal Authority explain its redevelopment plan in detail to residents. In order to ask meaningful questions and push for satisfactory answers, she went through piles of official documents and worked with neighbours with expertise in construction.

Her efforts led to the discovery of an engineering report that advised against large-scale development in the neighbourhood to avoid endangering the structure of buildings nearby. The authority later cut 18 storeys off the first proposed 24-storey residential block on the grounds of community concern. "The URA never told us whether that decision was related to the engineering discovery," she said.

Law's passion for conservation has thrust her into the limelight; her opinion on development projects in Central is often sought by the press because she is one of several people who started the residents' movement to conserve Central.

But until five years ago, she was a full-time housewife.

Law studied social sciences at college and worked in a publishing house until 1996, when she quit to take on full-time parenting. From then till about five years ago, the mother of two counted pottery as her main hobby.

Her first experience with conservation came in 2005, when she took her daughter and son to join a campaign to save several mature trees growing beside the external wall of the Hollywood Road married police quarters. "It was a meaningful activity and I also wanted my children to have more contact with their community," she said. After saving the trees came the campaign to save the Central Police Compound.

Then Law and several neighbours, including art critic John Batten and heritage writer Roger Ho Yiu-sang, decided they should not wait for others to organise campaigns to stop their neighbourhood falling victim to excessive development. They formed the Central and Western Concern Group.

Over the years, the group has pushed for the removal from the government's land application list of the Hollywood Road police quarters and the Central Market building. Inclusion on the list is a status guaranteeing land sales, destruction and redevelopment.

Its long list of continuing campaigns includes conserving the Central Police Compound and making it a public space; upgrading the Central Market building's antiquities status and demanding that the authority come up with a conservation plan for public scrutiny before it starts renovating the historic building; preserving the 160-year-old street market at Graham and Peel streets; seeking legal guarantees that the authority's redevelopment in Staunton Street will not become another "wall effect" series of apartment blocks and demanding that tenement buildings on the street, which have already undergone private renovation, be spared from demolition.

All projects are motivated by Law's passion to conserve the neighbourhood where she grew up.

Now 43, she has lived on Caine Road since she was three. Her grandfather used to own an antique shop in Hollywood Road. She attended Sacred Heart Canossian School and graduated from the University of Hong Kong with a degree in social science. "The neighbours saw me growing up; they saw my kids growing up. We are friends. I cannot imagine not living in Central. I will never leave this place," she said.

But the Central she is madly in love with is disappearing. "Central is not only a business district. A large part of Central is home to many people and small businesses. They have been living and working in those streets for decades. This place is also rich in history. But it is facing destruction. Every day, I hear the noise of construction. I got upset, my neighbours also got upset. So we decided we had to act," she said.

Acting meant she not only had to break her routine, but also learn.

Starting from her first campaign to remove the Hollywood Road police quarters from the land application list, she learned to go through archives, approach experts, set up counters on the streets to gather signatures, speak through a loud hailer, call reporters and pitch stories to them, write to the letters pages, lobby district councillors, organise carnivals, file rezoning applications with the Town Planning Board and appeal to the Antiquities Advisory Board.

Her persistence led to excavation works at the former police quarters that uncovered 40 per cent of the foundations of the former Central School, Hong Kong's first government institution offering upper primary and secondary education. The school, set up in 1862 on Gough Street, was attended by modern China's founder, Sun Yat-sen, as a teenager. It moved to the Hollywood Road site in 1889.

Explaining her motivation, Law said: "I am not against change. Evolution and change are natural. I am against excessive development and the government's heavy-handed intervention. They round up the land and pull down the old structures. Why can't we renovate the tenement houses so the streetscape of Central will not be hurt?

"The URA says the buildings are run-down and therefore have to be demolished, but the buildings' condition is a result of the URA's plan. By announcing an area as a redevelopment zone, they are inviting the landlords to give up maintaining their buildings," she said.

"Central is rich in history and home to many people. Any changes must be done sensitively by preserving the history, the streetscape, the cultural fabric and the people's way of life. I don't believe there is only one way of redevelopment. I believe there are many ways of regenerating a historic neighbourhood."

hkskyline

April 21st, 2010, 05:07 PM

Restoration works for Lo Pan Temple completed
Government Press Release
Tuesday, April 20, 2010

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With a subsidy provided by the Commissioner for Heritage's Office of the Development Bureau, the public can now admire the 126-year-old Lo Pan Temple again upon the completion of its restoration works.

The Secretary for Development, Mrs Carrie Lam, officiated at the completion ceremony today (April 20). Also present were representatives from the construction industry.

At the ceremony, Mrs Lam said that the Commissioner for Heritage's Office launched the Financial Assistance for Maintenance Scheme in August 2008, which provides financial assistance to owners of privately owned graded historic buildings to carry out minor maintenance works, enabling appropriate preservation of historic buildings and better appreciation of the heritage value of these buildings by the public. Up to present, the maintenance scheme has received 13 applications. Nine of them have been approved, with the grants totalling around $7.2 million.

"Lo Pan Temple was the first successful application under the Financial Assistance for Maintenance Scheme and also one of the first projects with the restoration works completed. Through the restoration works at Lo Pan Temple, we wish to enhance public understanding of conservation of historic buildings," Mrs Lam said.

Located at 15 Ching Lin Terrace, Kennedy Town, Lo Pan Temple received a grant of $711,000 for the restoration of its roof tiles, purlins and walls. Upon completion of the restoration works, Lo Pan Temple is open to the public free of charge between 9.30am and 5pm daily.

Lo Pan Temple is the only temple in Hong Kong dedicated to the worship of Lo Pan, the patron saint of Chinese builders and carpenters. According to the carvings inside the temple, it was constructed in 1884 by the Contractors' Guild with donations from people of the related trades. The temple is a two-hall structure, richly decorated with mural paintings as well as Shiwan ceramic figurines and mouldings. It was accorded Grade 1 status by the Antiquities Advisory Board (AAB) in 1994 and the same grading was re-confirmed by the AAB in December 2009.

hkskyline

May 20th, 2010, 07:49 PM

LCQ3: Conservation of Wing Lee Street
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Government Press Release

Following is a question by Dr Hon Priscilla Leung Mei-fun and a reply by the Secretary for Development, Mrs Carrie Lam, in the Legislative Council today (May 12):

Question:

The Urban Renewal Authority (URA) announced in November 2008 that a "conservation-led" redevelopment approach would be adopted for the Staunton Street/Wing Lee Street project. After the film "Echoes of the Rainbow" with scenes shot at Wing Lee Street won an award in Berlinale in late February this year, quite a number of people proposed to conserve the whole Wing Lee Street, but the Chairman of URA indicated that it was not necessary to revise the redevelopment proposal. Yet, on March 16, 2010, he suddenly put forward a new proposal to revise the number of tenement buildings to be conserved from three to all 12 of such buildings, on grounds that URA had received views from quite a number of members of the public in this regard. In this connection, will the Government inform this Council:

(a) given that before deciding to revise the redevelopment proposal of Wing Lee Street, URA had not convened a Board meeting to discuss the matter and had only sent letters to the directors requesting them to authorise the management to deal with the matter, whether it knows if URA had adopted this arrangement due to special circumstances and if there was any precedent, and whether URA had consulted experts in conservation and history before announcing such a decision; whether it had consulted or informed the Development Bureau (DEVB); if it had consulted DEVB, of DEVB's views; if not, the reasons for that;

(b) given that the original redevelopment proposal had been proposed for more than one year since its announcement, and URA has already acquired half of the property interests on Wing Lee Street, whether it knows the reasons for URA putting forward the new proposal; during the decision-making process for the new proposal, whether URA was under any pressure from government department(s) or community organisation(s); whether the winning of an international award by the film "Echoes of the Rainbow" was crucial to the decision of URA; and

(c) given that some elderly property owners in the tenement buildings on Wing Lee Street are worried that under the new proposal, not only are they unable to sell their properties, but they also have to bear substantial costs for repair and maintenance, whether it knows if URA had considered the rights and interests of these property owners before putting forward the new proposal?

Reply:

President,

The Staunton Street/Wing Lee Street redevelopment project (H19) is one of the 25 redevelopment projects announced but yet to be commenced by the former Land Development Corporation which the Urban Renewal Authority (URA) has taken over upon its establishment in 2001. The project area comprises three sites, namely Sites A, B and C. Apart from the conservation of the tenement buildings at Nos.88-90 of Staunton Street at Site B and the restoration of the stone steps at Shing Wong Street, the original proposal was basically a redevelopment-led project. During the planning process of the project, there were evident changes in the public aspirations for heritage conservation. In October 2007, the HKSAR Government announced a new policy statement on heritage conservation and a range of initiatives on conservation, including the revitalisation of the Central Police Station Compound and the Police Married Quarters site at Hollywood Road in the vicinity of the H19. The developments in recent years have directly affected the URA's consideration of the development plan for H19, in particular, Wing Lee Street at Site A. The URA had carried out a heritage assessment for the project and the consultants pointed out that preserving the existing street pattern around Wing Lee Street and Shing Wong Street would be the best way to remember the history of urban development of that community.

In view of the above-mentioned development, the URA, with the support of the Development Bureau (DEVB), announced the substantial revision of the proposal for Wing Lee Street in November 2008. Under the new proposal, a "conservation-led" approach would be adopted to implement the project covering Wing Lee Street. The original proposal of building a high-rise building on the site would be abandoned. The Bridges Street Market and the three buildings at Nos.10-12 Wing Lee Street would be conserved. Nos. 1-9 Wing Lee Street would be demolished and a row of buildings modelled on the typology, height and scale of the existing tenement buildings would be re-constructed in-situ to preserve the existing "terrace" ambience. With the revision, the plot ratio of H19 would be substantially reduced from eight to not more than 4.5, which was widely agreed and supported by the public at that time.

I have set out the background of the Wing Lee Street project in detail, because these developments are relevant to the question raised by Dr Hon Priscilla Leung Mei-fun. My reply to the three-part question is as follows:

(a) The URA's decision on the Wing Lee Street project in March this year was to provide an alternative way of implementation to achieve the "conservation-led" approach it put forward in November 2008, that is, one could either conserve the three old buildings at Wing Lee Street and replicate the others on the same model or conserve and rehabilitate the entire row of 12 old buildings. Basically, there is no departure from the "conservation" objective.

It is believed that the URA has put forth an alternative way of conservation after taking into account the public views (particularly those from the conservation groups and some property owners of Wing Lee Street) collected during the public consultation of the Master Layout Plan (MLP) which was prepared on the basis of the amendment proposal in 2008. According to schedule, the Town Planning Board (TPB) would discuss the MLP and the public comments received at the meeting on March 19. It is understandable that the URA decided to put forward an alternative way before the TPB meeting so as to facilitate the TPB's discussion. Given the pressing schedule, the management of the URA, with the consent of the URA Chairman and in line with the established procedures, sought and obtained the URA Board's authorisation to deal with the matter by circulation of paper.

The URA Board holds regular meetings once every six weeks on average. Under its Standing Orders, the URA may, if necessary, seek advice or approval from the Board on urgent matters by circulation of papers in between meetings. Since January 1, 2010, six papers, including the one on authorising the management of the URA to deal with the proposal on the conservation of Wing Lee Street, have been circulated to the Board for approval.

As mentioned above, during the planning process of the project, the URA appointed consultants to carry out a heritage assessment. The latest proposal, just like the one in November 2008, has the "conservation-led" approach as one of the main considerations in project planning.

After formulating its latest proposal, the URA notified the DEVB before its publication. In principle, the DEVB supports the URA in proposing an alternative way to carry out the conservation of Wing Lee Street. The URA has therefore submitted both the new and the original proposals to the TPB for consideration.

(b) As mentioned above, the URA has adopted a "conservation-led" approach as the basis of the revised proposal for Wing Lee Street since November 2008. There are different ways to carry out conservation in order to maintain the unique "terrace" ambience of Wing Lee Street. It can be the earlier proposal where the old fuses with the new or it can be the current additional proposal of "complete conservation". The latest proposal of the URA has been made in response to some of the demands in the community for a "complete conservation" of Wing Lee Street and some property owners' aspiration for direct participation in conservation.

As stated clearly by the URA Chairman at the press interview on March 16, the URA was not under any pressure from government departments or organisations when formulating the latest alternative implementation proposal. We are glad that a Hong Kong produced film has won an international award. But as mentioned above, the important decision in conserving Wing Lee Street was made in November 2008 and it was a positive response from the URA to the new policy direction as well as to the public aspirations for heritage conservation.

(c) As Wing Lee Street is still currently part of a redevelopment project already commenced by the URA, the URA has committed to continuing negotiating for property acquisition with the owners at Wing Lee Street according to its established acquisition policy and practice before the TPB agrees to excise Wing Lee Street (i.e. Site A) from the redevelopment area. The URA will also assist the tenants concerned by rehousing them in public housing or offering them cash compensation according to established compensation and rehousing policies. As it takes time to complete the standing procedures of the TPB, the property owners (owner-occupiers or otherwise) of the tenement buildings in Wing Lee Street still have time to sell their properties to the URA if they choose to do so and the affected tenants will still be rehoused or compensated.

hkskyline

June 2nd, 2010, 05:03 PM

Central Market will not be 'too commercialised'
1 June 2010
South China Morning Post

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Central Market will never become another posh heritage mall like the former Marine Police Headquarters in Tsim Sha Tsui, Urban Renewal Authority advisers have pledged.

"The public has sent us a clear message. The market will not become a shopping centre, and it will not be too commercialised," Professor David Lung Ping-yee, who chairs the advisory community for the revitalisation project, said yesterday.

Lung was summarising findings of a questionnaire conducted by authority staff earlier this year. More than 6,000 people, including tourists, were interviewed, some in Central and some in other districts.

About 60 per cent of the interviewees said they wanted the historic market building in Des Voeux Road Central to be transformed into a leisure venue with a lot of greenery.

Half of the respondents also wanted the building to provide space for open-air performances, art exhibitions or art shops.

While dining was a less preferred option, with only 30 per cent saying they would like restaurants in the market, most respondents favoured shops selling food with a local flavour and at affordable prices.

Luxury brands were "the last thing wanted", 240 people said, while a further 540 indicated they would not want a commercialised project.

"Committee members have agreed we will not do anything like 1881 Heritage," Lung said, referring to the monument site in Tsim Sha Tsui handed over to a subsidiary of Cheung Kong, which converted it into a boutique hotel and mall.

The mix of uses would be determined at forthcoming meetings, Lung said.

The authority's managing director, Quinn Law Yee-kwan, agreed that the land uses were unlikely to generate much profit.

"But social benefits and the community's recognition of our work should also be taken into account when we talk about income," he said.

The authority has undertaken a HK$500 million project to transform the 71-year-old building into an "oasis", with open space and facilities for the community's enjoyment.

Built in 1939, the Central Market, a piece of Streamline Moderne architecture, was then the Canton Bazaar, and its design was based on the London County Council by-laws of 1915. It stopped operating in 2003.

Preliminary results of a structural survey found the existing concrete cover for the beams, slabs and columns of the structure would not satisfy today's building codes. Carbonation has also corroded the steel reinforcement in beams and slabs.

The biggest challenge of the project is to bring the building up to code. Additional work might be needed to prolong its life for another 30 years, Lung said. The whole project is expected to take about five years to complete.

hkskyline

June 7th, 2010, 11:21 AM

Public buys idea of `oasis' market
The Standard
Tuesday, June 01, 2010

The promise that the refurbished Central Market will be an "oasis" in the urban sprawl has struck a popular chord, and is being pushed hard as a selling line for the project.
Urban Renewal Authority officials were touting that line yesterday, saying the market will be a stand-out feature on the island while commercial activities there will be limited.

David Lung Ping-yee, chairman of the Central Oasis Community Advisory Committee, assured it will truly offer a breath of fresh air. On questions about money - whether a downtown facility that is not stacked with commercial elements can pay for itself - Lung said public pleasure is more important than revenue.

Details of how much revenue can be expected at the new-look market, as well as operating costs, will be released when research is completed, he added.

On that, authority managing director Quinn Law Yee-kwan said the more money spent on reconstruction at the outset means the less will be needed to be spent later on maintenance and repairs.

The "oasis" idea was mooted by Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen in his policy address last October, and the government is already committed to spending HK$500 million on revitalizing the 71-year-old, now-empty market on Des Voeux Road Central.

The advisory committee has more recently been sounding out people about what they want from the revitalization. Of 6,019 respondents in a street survey last month, 82 percent backed the oasis approach as the guiding theme, while more than 60 percent wanted recreational facilities, and 56 percent a green area.

An overwhelming 88 percent said they favored a transparent roof on the building.

Only 30 percent said they wanted to see restaurants and shops. Those views will be taken into account when the final call is made on facilities, Lung said.

Currently, planners are determining what they will be working with, as many structural records have been lost since Central Market rose in 1939. It is also apparent from the rust and erosion there that much of the structure needs testing before refurbishment plans can be settled, Lung said.

hkskyline

June 18th, 2010, 03:39 PM

Institute set up to halt damage of historic sites
7 June 2010
SCMP

An institute of heritage conservationists has been formed to promote standards of practice and prevent damage of historic buildings.

As more heritage sites are put up for revitalisation and maintenance, there is no law or guideline to monitor the quality of such work, especially for privately owned sites.

The Institute of Architectural Conservationists will draw up a code of practice and a list of recommended professionals qualified to conduct restoration and alteration works to historic buildings, Dr Lee Ho-yin, director of the University of Hong Kong's architectural conservation programme, said.

"Heritage conservation is a growing field in Hong Kong. In the past, works were conducted by contractors who did not have to be supervised by professionals, and the results were often unsatisfactory," said Lee who is vice-president of the institute founded by teaching staff and alumni of the university's architectural conservation programme.

The institute will be launched in September and is expected to recognise 50 to 100 professionals in its first five years. At present, when architects and planners start work on historic buildings, they must follow a conservation plan that the Development Bureau tailors for each site. The bureau also had a list of professionals for internal reference.

But on privately owned sites, the owners decide what they want to do with their properties, unless government funding is helping to pay for the work. It is against this background that some buildings were damaged and therefore downgraded in a recent review of the historic gradings of some 1,400 sites in the city.

Tam Kung Sin Shing Temple in Shau Kei Wan, built by fishermen in 1905, was downgraded from grade one to three after a revamp in 2002.

The Tin Hau Temple in Aberdeen is another example of the damage that can be done. It was downgraded from grade two to three because of the Chinese Temples Committee's reconstruction in 1999, which removed most of the original materials except the roof ridge, stone columns and relics such as a copper bell.

Another example is the controversial revitalisation of the former Marine Police headquarters in Tsim Sha Tsui into a boutique hotel and shopping mall.

The developer, Cheung Kong (Holdings), had been criticised for adding a new structure to the monument, the shopping mall, resulting in visitors unable to tell which part is heritage.

Curry Tse Ching-kan, a conservation consultant for the project, conceded that when he drafted the plan in 2003, preservation was not a pritoirty in the industry. "The principle should be that new additions are easily distinguishable from the old, but it was up to the architect to interpret the plan," Tse said.

To be a recommended conservationist, the person must have completed a masters degree in conservation locally or overseas, a few years' work experience and passed examinations.

Apart from research and working out an accreditation system, the institute is also tasked to draft a charter based on international standards of practice, with a focus on the city's high land value issue, Lee said.

"We will study whether the Town Planning Board should have more legal powers to control development at heritage sites. There should be conservation zoning that covers an area instead of one block, for example," he said.

Options to adapt the use of old buildings, instead of knocking them down for wholesale redevelopment, would also be proposed, he said. The Development Bureau said it supported any initiatives towards heritage conservation.

hkskyline

July 25th, 2010, 04:27 PM

Public pleasure, private ownership?
20 July 2010
China Daily - Hong Kong Edition

A family legacy and cultural treasure, Dragon Garden is testing the civic-minded imagination of a granddaughter. How she sees and approaches the challenge of presenting this historic site without losing it is the focus of Christopher DeWolf's report.

When Cynthia Lee Hong-yee found out that her family planned to sell her grandfather's private Hong Kong garden to developers, she returned from the United States to take photos of the lush greenery and eclectic Western-influenced Chinese architecture.

"I was capturing some of the details and I realized I just couldn't capture Dragon Garden's greatness," she said. "It has to be experienced."

She realized the garden needed to be saved - and it was up to her to do it. After a contentious battle with the relatives who owned the garden, Lee managed to persuade her uncle, Lee Shiu, to save it from redevelopment by purchasing it from his brothers and nephews for HK$100 million. The plan, after that, was to donate the garden to the government, which would then open it to the public.

That was in 2006. Since then, the garden, which is located on the shores of the Rambler Channel just west of Sham Tseng, has sat in limbo, free from the threat of demolition but with no concrete plans to restore it and open it to the public. The Lees' original offer to donate the garden was rebuffed by the government. It later changed tack and said it could take over the site, but would not guarantee how it would be used in the future.

As Hong Kong debates how best to preserve its heritage, the case of Dragon Garden poses a question that has proved surprisingly hard to answer: once you've saved an historic site, what do you do with it?

"Once you decide to keep something like this, you need a lot of money to preserve it, and there has to be some kind of public contribution to deal with it," said Lee Ho-yin, the director of the University of Hong Kong's Architectural Conservation Programme.

The problem is that Hong Kong's heritage conservation policies make little allowance for a privately-owned site whose owners want to open it to the public, he said. Roughly HK$30 million would be needed to restore Dragon Garden. While Lee Shiu is considering setting up a trust that would fund the garden's day-to-day management, Cynthia Lee said the government would need to provide money for the capital works needed to restore the garden and bring it up to code.

In 2007, the government offered to include Dragon Garden in a new revitalization scheme for historical buildings, one that also includes the Blue House in Wan Chai, a block of the former Shek Kip Mei Estate and a former police station in Tai O. In order to take part in the scheme, however, the government would need to take ownership of Dragon Garden and award its management to a non-governmental organization. The Tai O Police Station is currently being converted into a boutique hotel and the Shek Kip Mei housing estate will eventually be home to a youth hostel.

"The revitalization scheme is a step in the right direction, but it has its flaws," said Lee. "With projects like these, there's a danger that our heritage is being used for private uses. We want to open a private heritage site to the public, not vice versa."

The government's 2007 offer still stands, and Lee said her uncle will soon begin negotiating a different arrangement that would allow him to retain ownership of the site even as the government provides financial support for its restoration. In the meantime, Lee will focus on planning ways to build a future for Dragon Garden by drawing from its past.

The garden's story began with Lee Iu-cheung, who was born in Hong Kong in 1896 to a migrant family from Zhongshan, Guangdong. Lee grew up in Sheung Wan, where he witnessed some of Hong Kong's more deplorable living conditions, an experience that gave him "a lasting compassion for the poverty-stricken," according to his childhood friend Shum Wai-yau, who published a short biography of Lee in 1967.

Lee eventually became what newspapers refer to as a tycoon - a wealthy, powerful businessman with interests ranging from trucking to cinema to construction. But Lee's true passion was philanthropy, and he put his considerable influence to good use on the boards of several hospital groups and charities.

When Lee bought a barren hillside near Sham Tseng in 1949, his intention was not only to create a garden for his family, but something he could share with the whole of Hong Kong. The first thing he did was build a swimming pool, which he opened to the public, nearly a decade before the first public swimming pool opened in Victoria Park.

"He had read that some children had drowned at the beach and he said, 'I'm going to build something big enough for the schoolchildren to come use it,'" said Cynthia Lee.

In 1958, Lee hired renowned Chinese architect Chu Pin to build an ancestral hall, mausoleum and pavilion. Waterfalls, ponds and a stream were built in the garden, flowing toward the ocean in accordance with feng shui principles. Statues representing Buddhist, Taoist and Christian traditions were scattered throughout the site.

The same mish-mash of Chinese and Western styles is found throughout the garden: Qing Dynasty-style buildings covered in mosaic tiles, for instance, or stained glass windows depicting traditional Chinese scenes.

The garden's architecture was interesting enough to catch the eye of Hollywood film producers. In the 1974 James Bond movie The Man With a Golden Gun, Dragon Garden serves as the estate of a nefarious Thai-Chinese businessman, Hai Fat, who intercepts Bond after he sneaks into the garden and tries to join Fat's girlfriend as she skinny-dips in the pool.

"It somehow captures the environment of Hong Kong during the 1960s and 70s, which was a combination of different styles and influences," said Marisa Yiu, an assistant professor of architecture at the University of Hong Kong.

Even more remarkably, the garden was built using techniques that are today considered environmentally-friendly, with plenty of recycled materials. Footpath curbs were made with ginger beer bottles, as was the large dragon fountain that serves as the garden's centerpiece. Granite slabs were salvaged from demolished buildings in Central. The pool water was pumped in from the sea. Rainwater was recycled to supply the garden's water features.

For all its ingenuity, though, it didn't take long for the garden to fall into disuse after Lee died in 1976. In the late 1990s, part of its front section was lopped off by the widening of Castle Peak Road. The government built a large concrete wall to shield the garden from road noise. After the family decided to sell the property, it was left to decay, and Hong Kong's heat and humidity took its toll on the garden's buildings.

But the vegetation thrived, and today's garden has an unruly appearance that complements its eccentric atmosphere. "The most amazing thing is the calmness and the nature of it," Yiu said. "There's really something quite powerful about that space. I don't know if it's the different components, the way the trees are or the water space, but there's something very magical. You can't capture it, not through film or photography or writing about it. You just have to be there."

Finding a way for the general public to experience that sense of magic is something that Cynthia Lee has been trying to do for most of the past four years. After the garden was saved, she set up a charitable trust to promote dialogue about heritage conservation. The garden is now open once a month for public visits and it often plays host to group tours.

Lee has also invited artists and students to study the site. Earlier this year, Yiu made Dragon Garden the focus of her graduate architecture seminar on cultural landscapes. Seven groups of students made installations that raised questions about different aspects of the garden. One used LED boxes to literally shed light on some of the garden's easy-to-miss details; another explained the history of the ginger beer bottles used in the garden.

"These kinds of private spaces are rarely discussed in Hong Kong," said one student, Choi Kit-wang, whose group made Where the Dragon Lies, an installation that used lights, recycled bottles and a fish pond to depict the new residential development that surrounds the garden and once threatened to destroy it.

"If you put it in context with new development, it forces people who move to the area to rethink their relationship to heritage and the garden," he said. "It's a good example of how residential development has grown rapidly without anyone caring about its impact on heritage," said his groupmate, William Lai Wing-fung.

Similar themes were explored by another installation, Resonance, which strung LED lights over the wall built when Castle Peak Road was widened. The lights blinked according to the level of sound emitted by cars passing by and planes flying overhead, a reminder of how Dragon Garden, once isolated, now finds itself on Hong Kong's urban fringe.

"There are quite a number of levels (at which) to enjoy the garden," said Bill Chan Yiu-kwan, one of the students behind Resonance. "You can just enjoy the nature of it, but if you get some information on the history of the garden, and the concepts and ideas behind it, it becomes more fascinating."

That is perhaps the biggest challenge in opening Dragon Garden to the public: making sure it remains relevant to the public. "There's so much potential for education in this garden," said Cynthia Lee. "It's not about commemorating my grandfather - it's about understanding Hong Kong in the period of time that the garden was built."

Lee said that a recently-completed feasibility study suggested dividing the garden into a mix of zones, some for public recreational use and others for educational use and research. The emphasis would be on showcasing the garden's history through new media and interactive experiences.

"We want to take a 21st century approach, which is about how the visitor engages with the garden and what they take away from it," said Lee. We don't want to put some objects behind glass for people to look at."

Of course, for all of this to be possible, there needs to be a way to pay for it all. The success of Lee's plans hinges on convincing the government to lend financial support to the garden without taking ownership, and then on finding private donors to sustain the trust her uncle has considered setting up.

That's no small task, said Lee Ho-yin. "I have no idea what a trust can do. Where does the money come from? From the public? Through donations? That would be very tricky. I don't know if it can happen."

But Cynthia Lee is confident that it can be done. She points to private gardens in Europe and North America, which are managed by trusts that raised money from the public, businesses and the government.

"It could be a win-win situation for the government and the people if we think outside the box and come up with an original solution," she said. She recalled how, four years ago, everyone told her that it was impossible to save Dragon Garden from redevelopment.

That turned out to be far from the truth. "It just goes to show that nothing is impossible if you take the right approach," she said.

hkskyline

July 30th, 2010, 05:49 PM

Landmark tree in concrete shell shows signs of stress
14 June 2010
SCMP

At the former site of the marine police headquarters in Tsim Sha Tsui - now a glittering boutique hotel and mall called 1881 Heritage - all the latest luxury goods are on display.

But for one of the oldest residents of the once-grassy knoll at the tip of the Kowloon Peninsula, the future is not looking so bright. A certified arborist says a century-old Chinese Banyan tree is showing signs of possibly terminal decline and needs urgent remedial action to save it.

Conservancy Association chief executive Ken So Kwok-yin suspects the tree, one of five "important" trees spared in the HK$350 million project, is suffering dehydration. "If we turn a blind eye and don't take remedial action, say for three to five years, there will be no chance for the tree ever to recover," he said.

Citybase Property Management, a Cheung Kong Group subsidiary that runs the site, said its arborist said the tree had no health problems but it was now planning improvements.

So said bare branches on the edge of the tree crown and a decrease in leaf density were warning signs of dehydration. He said the tree's habitat had been completely altered by the construction, including extensive excavation of the slope that once led up to the building, and its roots were no longer able to tap water from wider underground sources.

Most of the 193 trees on the site were felled or moved during the redevelopment. To keep the old banyan, a soil column nine metres in diameter was preserved under it by building a 10-metre concrete shell around it, but some of the roots had to be pruned to fit the shell.

So, who recently inspected the tree and compared its condition with photographic records, said its spread had shrunk by 40 per cent between 2005 and 2007, a natural outcome of root or branch pruning during construction.

But last year, after the official opening of the heritage site, the leaves had begun to fall off and become less dense. He suspected the problem might be related to the improper watering.

So said confining the tree in the cement shell meant its care had to be carefully adjusted. Proper watering should make the top 30 centimetres of soil moist, not just the soil at the bottom of the tree, and he doubted such thorough watering was being carried out.

So was also surprised at the absence of an automatic sprinkler system to water the plants and trees in such an expensive hotel project, developed by a subsidiary of the Cheung Kong Group, Flying Snow.

At Hong Kong Disneyland, he said, the watering of plants was not just automatic but was assisted by sensors inserted into the soil to monitor the moisture level.

According to Citybase, a landscaping contractor was responsible for the day-to-day care of the tree, such as watering, pest control and fertilising.

But the company did not give further details about the contractor's work.

It also said the arborist it hired regularly collected data on the moisture content of the soil.

"The arborist's report shows all the vitals of the tree are normal. But some enhancement measures can be adopted," it said.

hkskyline

July 30th, 2010, 05:50 PM

hkskyline

August 9th, 2010, 04:53 PM

We are missing out on a golden opportunity to sell the city, historians say
30 May 2010
SCMP

What do Michael Hutchence, the late lead singer of INXS, Ho Chi Minh and Philippine revolutionary Jose Rizal have in common?

Well, they all lived in Hong Kong - Australian singer-songwriter Hutchence as a teenager in Repulse Bay and Mosque Street before becoming famous. Ho was arrested by the British while he was here and Rizal was a doctor before returning to the Philippines where he was executed in 1898. But walking around Hong Kong, the only indication of any of these men is a plaque to Rizal in the Mid-Levels.

Local historians Tony Banham and Dr Dan Waters feel that's a shame and that Hong Kong is missing out on a golden opportunity to sell the city. Both would like to see a series of plaques and trails to guide the local visitor and tourist around.

"Most visitors coming here expect it to be a concrete jungle and most of the time that's all we give them," Banham said. "There are so many aspects of Hong Kong that we do a very poor job of using to our advantage. What a huge number of eccentric, interesting and remarkable people have passed through and left their influence behind."

On Waters' wish list is a plaque at the Hung Shing Temple in Wan Chai to mark how the sea used to lap at its doors and often flood the building before reclamation began in the mid-19th century.

He would also like to see a plaque in Broadcast Drive in Kowloon Tong to commemorate where outspoken Commercial Radio host Lam Bun was burned to death in his car during the riots of 1967.

"Hong Kong has possibly the most diverse history in the region, yet we hide it," Banham said. A system of trails and plaques, he said, would attract tourists as Hong Kong loses its position as purely a shopping centre. "Tourists are becoming more sophisticated. They want more than Disney and shopping."

The Tourism Board said it had promoted the city's history and culture through its Kaleidoscope programmes. Its trails include one honouring Dr Sun Yat-sen and also the Wong Nai Chung Gap Trail which shows the defence of Hong Kong during the second world war.

But Banham would like to see a much more integrated approach. His speciality is the defence of Hong Kong after the Japanese invasion in December 1941. "There's very little to show in Hong Kong where battles were fought, where thousands of civilians died.

"Take, for example, the North Point prisoner of war camp - where several thousand POWs passed through and some perished along the way. There's a park and a nice sitting out area where I can guarantee that the locals, let alone the tourists, don't know what happened at that spot."

Then there is the Legislative Council building, where in the basement a number of those working for the British were interrogated and tortured.

"You don't want any topic like this to dominate Hong Kong," Banham said. "But this is such a bustling city that I think it's just a quiet few moments as you think about what happened at this spot. I don't think it hurts to think a bit more deeply.

"The bravery of the Chinese agents who fought in Hong Kong against the Japanese on behalf of the allies, that's something that you would think should be memorialised. Yet aside from their graves in Stanley I don't know of any memorial at all. I know there is some sort of memorial in Sai Kung but that's a bit remote. I'm very in favour of having memorials where people can see them."

Waters and Banham also suggest Hong Kong's film industry could be showcased by indicating where some famous movies were shot. For example, a plaque at Chungking Mansions in Tsim Sha Tsui or up the escalator in Central to show where award-winning actors Faye Wong and Tony Leung Chiu-wai starred in Chungking Express in 1994.

Or a whole variety of shopping centres where Jackie Chan has kicked out windows and swung from balconies all in the name of getting the baddie.

Perhaps a plaque at the Star Ferry for both The World of Suzie Wong and Love is a Many Splendoured Thing.

Banham believes a whole list of colourful eccentric and gifted people should have their moment of fame as someone glances down to read their plaque. For example, E. R. Belilios, the foremost opium trader in the former British colony used to commute on a camel from Mid-Levels to Central, until his camel jumped off a cliff.

hkskyline

August 12th, 2010, 04:10 PM

Ming-era porcelain factory left to rot in undergrowth
Land dispute stymies conservation plan for Tai Po site
9 August 2010
South China Morning Post

A porcelain kiln site in Tai Po that once thrived during the Ming and Qing dynasties has suffered neglect and damage over six years since a conservation plan was shelved because of land ownership problems.

With no protection other than a wire fence, the Wun Yiu kiln site, on densely wooded slopes, lies exposed to the weather.

A visit by the South China Morning Post last week after recent heavy rainstorms found fresh abrasion marks on the slopes, and pieces of porcelain bowls and plates scattered around. Some pieces were apparently washed down the slope from within the fenced area, which was declared a monument in 1983.

A hole had been cut through the fence large enough to let a person enter. There was no watchman and people could tread on hundreds of pieces of bowls lying outside the fenced area, or even take them away.

The 1,500 square metres of government land fenced in is only 3 per cent of the old porcelain factory's five hectares, which includes private land. Apart from a handful of porcelain samples and display boards in the adjacent Fan Sin Temple, little information is available on the site.

Archaeological investigations at Wun Yiu in 1995 and 1999 discovered key elements of porcelain production, including clay quarrying pits, water mills, an animal-driven grinder and clay-soaking tanks.

The excavation also found 5,000 to 6,000 pieces of broken bowls, plates, basins, incense holders and other items.

The Man and Tse clans started the industry in Wun Yiu in the 1430s in the Ming dynasty, employing hundreds of workers and exporting products to Southeast Asia. It thrived until the 1930s, when competition from machine-made wares killed it.

"It was a very big factory {hellip} It's proof that Hong Kong was not just a fishing village but an important crafts hub," an archaeologist wrote in a 2000 publication of the Leisure and Cultural Services Department.

Conservancy Association campaign manager Peter Li Siu-man said he had written to the government to call for better protection. "The community has higher aspirations for heritage conservation than before," he said. "It's time the government revisited the shelved museum plan."

The plan dated to 2001 when the defunct Culture and Heritage Commission, a high-level advisory body, proposed a Wun Yiu site museum "of regional to world-class importance".

In a reply to the Post, the Antiquities and Monuments Office said it inspected the kiln site on July 28 and had already arranged for repairs to the broken fence.

The office said minimal intervention for underground remains was "normal conservation practice", but it admitted a conservation plan had been shelved because villagers had not shown support for it.

The plan, introduced in 2004, recommended a minimum-intervention approach for the relics, development of a heritage trail and conversion of a nearby abandoned school into an on-site display centre.

"The villagers strongly indicated that the AMO should not implement any measures unless their village small house applications could be resolved," the office said.

Tai Po Rural Committee chairman Man Chen-fai said he did not understand why the stalemate had continued for years. "We do not object to conservation, but the conservation zone should not cover areas already zoned for village houses. If it is the case, there should be compensation," Man said.

Peter Li said the government should come up with a policy for dealing with heritage and ecological sites on private land, because land ownership had repeatedly been an obstacle to conservation.

The chairman of the city's Archaeological Society, Cheng Kai-ming, said Wun Yiu was a pillar of Hong Kong's early industrial development and deserved much better protection than it was getting.

"The government should pay attention not just to historic buildings but also to archaeological sites. Wun Yiu makes an ideal on-site museum that can appeal to tourists, with all its history and relics," Cheng said.

hkskyline

August 17th, 2010, 04:47 AM

`Ghost tree' comes back to haunt officials
The Standard
Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Former students of Maryknoll Convent School, still fuming over the felling of the campus "Ghost tree," have accused three government departments of failing in their duty to protect Hong Kong's heritage.

In a petition filed yesterday before the Office of the Ombudsman, the Ghost Pine Organization said the incident in February was the result of inadequate guidelines and the lack of proper supervision.

The group accused the Antiquities and Monuments Office, Development Bureau and Leisure and Cultural Services Department of negligence resulting in the roots of the tree being badly damaged during drainage work.

Legislator Tanya Chan Suk- chong, who is assisting the group, said the antiquities office had assured the school the work would not damage the ground structure.

"If that is the case, we suspect there was a lack of inspection on its part and in follow-up action during the drainage work leading to the damage to the tree's roots," Chan said.

The 74-year-old 20-meter pine tree was cut down on February 6 after Maryknoll said there was a danger of it collapsing.

hkskyline

August 31st, 2010, 06:05 AM

Taiwanese bookseller looking at market site
Industry says project should go to locals
31 August 2010
South China Morning Post

A major bookseller in Taiwan is looking at the Central Market as a possible site to set up shop in Hong Kong, but the choice may be disputed by local players in publishing.

The Urban Renewal Authority, in charge of the revitalisation project for the 71-year-old building in Des Voeux Road Central, said the use of the block would ultimately be determined by the public.

"There will be a fair process in the selection of Central Oasis' [the name of the market project] future operator," said a spokesman for the authority, adding that a public forum would soon be organised.

A committee that advises the authority on the project met yesterday but has yet to discuss the business model and partners. A person present at the meeting said: "The project could be run by one or multiple operators. The committee is determined to keep the selection process very fair and transparent, with thorough consultation.

"Public opinion will be above any other considerations, including political pressure," the person said.

The remarks came as Financial Secretary John Tsang Chun-wah, during his visit to Taiwan this week, welcomed a plan by Eslite, the biggest bookstore chain in Taiwan, to expand to Hong Kong. Tsang indicated that government departments would discuss the idea with the company.

Eslite chairman Robert Wu had also mentioned the Central Market as a possible option, along with Causeway Bay or Kowloon.

Eslite is also looking for a vacant factory building as an alternative, according to a person familiar with the deal.

The bookstore's flagship store in Hong Kong would, like the one in Taipei, come with a restaurant and a food court, a lifestyle design store, a contemporary art gallery, an education centre, a theatre and an observation deck, according to its presentation to the Hong Kong government.

Jimmy Pang Chi-ming, chairman of local publisher Subculture, said the Central Market should be reserved for locals if it were to become a book city.

"Hongkongers absolutely are capable of creating their own city brands. If the market building is to be leased at a concessionary rent, I see no reason why locals should not be beneficiaries.

"The government may want to improve ties with Taiwan, but it should not do so at the expense of local creative industries," Pang said, adding that the West Kowloon Cultural District, which is set to be a regional arts hub, would be a better home to Eslite.

Daniel Lee Dat-ming, who runs Hong Kong Reader, a cultural bookstore in Mong Kok, said he also had reservations about giving concessions to a Taiwanese chain.

He said it is a constant battle for him to meet the monthly rental of more than HK$10,000 for his 800-square-foot shop, located on the seventh floor of an old building.

"The market building could be composed of small shops selling different kinds of books, and in that case, we would also be interested," Lee said, adding that the authority should get operators through an open tender process.

A survey conducted by the authority found that the majority of 6,000 respondents wanted a leisure venue that included green space.

The authority is conducting a structural survey.

hkskyline

August 31st, 2010, 08:09 AM

Hong Kong history on a plate, yet we spurn it
19 August 2010
South China Morning Post

It's sometimes forgotten just how much history Hong Kong has. The shorthand view that there was little to Hong Kong other than fishing before British colonialists arrived 170 years ago is a far cry from the truth. At a site in the New Territories, a kiln turned out that most identifiable of Chinese objects, blue and white porcelain, for centuries. It was exported throughout Southeast Asia and beyond. Archaeologists have unearthed evidence of a thriving industry in the five-hectare area. When the kiln thrived during the Ming and Qing dynasties porcelain was a luxury only the wealthy could afford. To know that it was being traded for goods like silk paints our past in considerably more vibrant colours.

And yet we don't seem to be expending much effort to celebrate that past. The Wun Yiu kiln has been neglected to the point of ruination. Despite having been declared a monument, a land dispute with villagers has left it overlooked and open to the ravages of the elements. The protection that the special status is supposed to confer has been made meaningless by inattention.

Even a conservation plan was seen to be too difficult; indigenous villagers demanding the right to build promised houses on the 97 per cent of the site that is in private hands caused that to be shelved six years ago. In place of attractions there's only a wire fence that is poorly maintained, a hillside that is freshly eroded with each downpour and broken pieces of porcelain littering the dirt. A visit by this newspaper showed none of the preservation that monument status is supposed to guarantee.

We should be capitalising on what we have to educate and to draw tourists. The atmosphere of a thriving kiln could be recreated with a museum and displays. That has been done successfully with the Sheung Yiu Folk Museum in Sai Kung. Hong Kong has just 94 buildings and places with monument status. Every effort has to be taken to keep them in the best condition. Disputes have to be settled using every resource that the government can muster. If a land purchase or swap is necessary at Wun Yiu, let's do it so the neglect can end. Or even more of Hong Kong's history will be forgotten.

hkskyline

September 8th, 2010, 03:50 PM

Urban renewal has no place for hungry ghosts
23 August 2010
SCMP

Redevelopment looks like ending two historic Yu Lan (Hungry Ghost) Festivals.

The festival is a month-long effort to appease restless spirits of the dead. But threats from urbanisation are forcing communities in Central, Kwai Chung and Wong Tai Sin this year to stage what are likely to be their last celebrations.

The festival falls on the 15th day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar, and more than 60 celebrations take place across the city throughout the month to pacify roaming hungry ghosts.

Worshippers make offerings of food, letters and fake cash to satisfy the hungry spirits.

The Ministry of Culture in Beijing is likely to name the festival, and three other traditional Hong Kong events, as part of the nation's intangible cultural heritage later this month or early next, said conservationist Roger Ho Yao-sheng, who is familiar with the Hong Kong government's approaches to Beijing on the matter.

The three other festivals are the Cheung Chau Bun Festival, the dragon boat water parade at Tai O and the Tai Hang fire dragon dance.

The prospect of gaining national status delighted Wong Kan-oi, chairman of festival organiser 30 House Yue Lan Associates, last year. He has been organising hungry ghost events in Central, Mid-Levels and Sheung Wan from his shop at 62 Staunton Street since 1996.

But he said an Urban Renewal Authority decision to redevelop the area which encompasses his shop has confused and depressed him and his neighbours.

People in the area began to celebrate the festival there more than a century ago, but their evictions, scheduled for February 11 next year, to make way for an urban renewal project, means the forthcoming celebrations Yu Lan festival on September 2 will be the last in the area.

"You're trying to make the festival a national heritage and meanwhile you're kicking us out. This is contradictory," Wong said. "We're deeply saddened by the way the government treats us."

Redevelopment projects, such as the one affecting Staunton Street and also Wing Lee Street, target old, dilapidated buildings with poor living conditions, and transform them into open spaces and community facilities, the authority says.

Ho, a heritage writer, said: "The group shouldn't be expelled. To dismiss them would be like terminating the historical pulse of this quarter."

Other celebrations in Yan Oi Court, Kwun Tong, and Choi Wan Estate in Wong Tai Sin are also facing the same threat from urbanisation or noise complaints.

One site at risk is the park in Hill Road, Pok Fu Lam, which might have to make way for the MTR's West Island Line.

Ho said festivals usually occurred in grass-roots areas and served important social functions because the government often could not, or did not, give smaller, poorer communities the care they needed.

"It's from ... meetings like this that a sense of local recognition and belonging is created, which is essentially what the government calls a `harmonious society'. These festivals peter out owing to redevelopments or people's deaths. Consequently, local culture vanishes.

Clairvoyant and exorcist Yik Yuen-ling, the honorary chairman of 30 House, said: "Since the community here has been feeding the hungry ghosts in this neighbourhood for many years, they are accustomed to this treatment. When they, the ancestors, arrive next year only to find nothing is prepared for them, they may think nobody cares about them and will create troubles like car crashes or fires."

Ho said: "If Yu Lan becomes a national heritage event, the government should actively look for sites nearby to keep the traditions."

The festival is often celebrated on soccer pitches or in parks, mainly by the Chiu Chow community, estimated to number 1.2 million.

Legend has it that Mu Lian, then the oldest Buddhist monk, discovered that his mother was a hungry ghost who was suffering in hell due to her misdeeds in life.

The monk used his magical powers to offer food to his mother, but the food turned into charcoal in her hands. Buddha advised him to ask monks and others to recite sacred scripts and perform rituals on the 15th day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar in order to temporarily release all hungry ghosts - including his mother - to receive food.

hkskyline

September 9th, 2010, 05:41 PM

CLP in talks on saving art deco HQ
Utility explores alternatives to demolition for tower already approved
3 September 2010
South China Morning Post

CLP Power is in talks with the government about economic incentives to preserve its 70-year-old headquarters in Argyle Street, Kowloon, as it seeks to guard redevelopment rights granted nine years ago.

Grade-one historic status was proposed by the Antiquities and Monuments Office last year for the building at 139-147 Argyle Street.

The negotiation is based on an approved building plan for a 39-storey residential tower atop a four-storey car-parking podium on the site that CLP secured in 2001, which could be worth billions of dollars, a person in the heritage-conservation field said.

A CLP spokeswoman confirmed the utility had had discussions with the government on "the need to balance between preservation of built heritage for the benefits of the community and allowing individual owners such as CLP to exercise the rights that come with ownership". "We are constantly reviewing our need and requirement for our properties and currently reviewing various options for our head office building," she said.

A top government official said it was having talks with a grade-one heritage owner, without giving a name. "If negotiations bore fruit, the case would be another example in which the government managed to secure preservation of privately owned heritage by handing out economic incentives instead of buying out with cash," the official said.

The art deco building was opened in 1940 as the utility, led by the Kadoorie family, extended the electricity supply for a growing Kowloon.

It marked a milestone in the development of the company and the district, according to a heritage appraisal by the antiquities office.

The two sides have been exploring several options to keep the block without affecting the owner's development rights. One possibility is partial preservation with new structures, as was done with the Wan Chai Market, with only the facade kept and the rear demolished for flats.

But this approach would impair the integrity of the symmetrical CLP building, architectural conservationist Dr Lee Ho-yin said. The block, standing on a landscaped embankment at a major junction of roads and flyovers, has long been a landmark.

Another option is for CLP to transfer the surplus development potential to another site it owns or one granted by the government. The present head office contains a gross floor area of about 78,000 square feet, according to the building plan. The 2001 plan would enable CLP to develop a residential tower with a floor area of about 309,000 square feet. This means the transfer could involve the unrealised 231,000 square feet.

Surveyors say the greatest challenge for this option is to find a suitable site. "You have to look for a site in the area large enough to receive the unrealised building space. There are very few such sites in Ho Man Tin and Kowloon Tong, except a site in Ede Road in the [government's] land sale list," SK Pang managing director Pang Shiu-kee said.

Building density in the area had already been capped, adding to the difficulty, he said. An attempt in 2000 to raise the plot ratio in Kadoorie Hills behind the headquarters block was rejected by the Town Planning Board, which wanted to maintain the "high-class low-density" scenic setting in the area.

Charles Chan Chiu-kwok, managing director of Savills Valuation and Professional Services, said the two sides could also be split on land values of the Argyle Street site and the transfer site. Officials would have to be careful in the calculations.

He estimated the CLP site could be worth HK$13,000 per square foot.

Donation of the site to the government in exchange for another - as in the case of King Yin Lei mansion in Stubbs Road, Mid-Levels - sounds a less likely option for the company, which has maintained the head office there for almost 70 years.

The Development Bureau has in recent years given economic incentives to other private owners of heritage buildings.

It is working out a plan with the Anglican Sheng Kung Hui so the church can transfer some development rights from its compound on Lower Albert Road to a Mt Butler site that it owns. It allowed owners of Jessville in Pok Fu Lam Road to build two residential towers next to the 77-year-old mansion by lifting a moratorium on denser redevelopment in the area. The latest case is in Prince Edward Road West, where the owner of a four-storey shophouse is being allowed to keep the facade and demolish the rear to build a hotel.

CLP is not new to real estate development, having turned a Hung Hom power plant into Laguna Verde with Cheung Kong Holdings in the 1990s.

Antiquities Advisory Board member Dr Ng Cho-nam said the government would have to justify the deal if it decided to give incentives involving a land exchange. "It seems that society is yet to form a consensus that the building is worth preserving with such a large-scale effort," he said.

hkskyline

September 18th, 2010, 09:23 AM

Restorers achieve a Mid-Levels Renaissance
3 September 2010
South China Morning Post

http://orientaldaily.on.cc/cnt/news/20100907/photo/0907-00176-018b1.jpg

Just one more month and the Mid-Levels mansion King Yin Lei will be restored to its former glory.

Repairs to the Chinese Renaissance-style mansion at 45 Stubbs Road are now in the final stage and restorers are fine-tuning the interior furnishings, Professor Tang Guohua, of the school of architecture and urban planning at Guangzhou University, said.

"We are inspecting the works and everything will be completed in October," Tang said.

While repairs to the bronze railing on the stairs and the timber floor were continuing, the red bricks, terrazzo decorative features and ceiling moulding have already been reproduced or fixed, and mosaic and cement tiles have been laid.

Work on the mansion's signature two-tone green roof is complete. Efforts were made to reproduce the lighter green tiles used in 1937 when it was built, and the deeper green tiles for the new wings added in the 1970s.

A contractor hired to deface the mansion is still holding some 100 items removed from the mansion, including wooden doors and window frames, in the hope of selling them. But as the government said no public money would be used to buy them back, the restorers have made replicas.

The Development Bureau said it would soon decide on the most suitable use for King Yin Lei: "One of the important principles is to provide free public access."

It has been three years since the mansion was defaced by its unidentified former owner, who sought to demolish it for redevelopment. The attempt initially escaped the government's attention but a halt to the work was finally called after media coverage, and officials provisionally declared the mansion a monument.

Monument status was confirmed in 2008, and the owner agreed to surrender the site in exchange for one on the slope next to it. The owner paid HK$57.99 million for the new site to build five three-storey houses.

hkskyline

September 30th, 2010, 05:42 PM

Shutters come down at little shop of honesty
The Standard
Tuesday, September 28, 2010

http://the-sun.on.cc/cnt/news/20100928/photo/0928-00407-033b1.jpg

For more than 80 years, a Yau Ma Tei shop with a name for honesty sold chu yee sing, better known as imitation gold jewelry, and other handmade items.

Yesterday, it enjoyed its best day, with more than 500 customers packing into the 400 square foot premises. It was also the shop's last day of business.

Owner Mok Kam-chung, 77, said he was both happy and sad - happy so many wanted to buy their final souvenirs, and sad he was closing. But he said rising rents and tired bones have taken their toll.

He had operated the shop on Reclamation Street since he was 19, having inherited it from his father, who started the business in 1926.

The company was called Lo Sutt, which, in Cantonese, means honest - a trait Mok said the family maintained.

"Father told me to do business honestly, and I did," he said.

hkskyline

October 2nd, 2010, 02:02 PM

Slicing history along Hollywood Rd
31 August 2010
China Daily - Hong Kong Edition
Martine Beale

When I first arrived in Hong Kong in 1988, Hollywood Road and Wyndham Street were lined with sleepy carpet shops selling colorful ethnic rugs, small, dusty antique shops crammed with junk, tatty go-downs and tired-looking residential blocks. There were only two bars on Wyndham Street: Mad Dogs and Caroline's. After dark, the metal shutters of small shops presented a blank face to quiet streets.

There was no big glassy Centrium building or LKF Tower. SOHO didn't exist. And the world's longest outdoor escalator which crosses Hollywood Road was not yet built.

Back then the only place you could catch one of the few local bands and take in some art over a cheap beer was the Fringe Club. Originally a cold storage warehouse built in 1890, it still sits at the top end of Wyndham Street on the junction with Lower Albert Road.

"When we moved into the premises in 1983 it was very run down," explains Catherine Lau, administrator of the club. "We spent years restoring the place and putting in new facilities".

It paid off.

In 2001 the Fringe Club received a Hong Kong Heritage Award in recognition of the restoration work and in 2009 the premises was declared a Grade I heritage building.

"Wyndham Street and Hollywood Road started to change after the escalator was built in 1993," she adds. "Now there are more restaurants and bars and the area has become more competitive, which is good as it offers customers more choice. It's also good for the Fringe Club because the neighborhood has become busier".

"Things will continue to change when the Central Police Station compound and former police married quarters sites are up and running," she says. Both historical landmarks will soon undergo massive redevelopment. The former will be transformed into a heritage, arts, cultural and tourism hub.

Proposed to be a balanced mix of cultural, heritage and commercial elements, it will house a 500-seat auditorium, 500-seat theater, two art cinemas, a gallery, a multipurpose exhibition space and supporting facilities.

"I sincerely hope the redevelopment will be sympathetic to the early 20th century aesthetic of the building. And that the tenant mix will be heavily weighted in favor of art galleries," says Shaun Kelly, founder of Zee Stone gallery.

I remember when his gallery opened in 1995, I was impressed by its size and the types of exhibitions it showed.

After 15 years on Wyndham Street, the gallery is moving to make way for yet another trendy bar-restaurant.

"Change is inevitable in Hong Kong," he says. "We're moving to One Hollywood Road where our neighbors will be some of the best galleries in Hong Kong. To me, the Wyndham Street and Hollywood Road area is the most interesting and entertaining area in Central - long may that continue".

Hollywood Road and Wyndham Street are now a hotbed of visual stimulation and social activity. Shiny high-rise buildings have squeezed out many of the old walk-up tenements; the sidewalk pulsates with bars, restaurants, art galleries and energy.

"With all the choices of food and beverage venues the area is very attractive," says Phillip Unicomb, restaurant manager of Tivo Wine Bar, who came to Hong Kong in 1996 to manage Wyndham Street Thai, one of the first restaurants to open on the street.

"We get everything from tourists to a steady number of local regulars as the street is now a thoroughfare for office workers from the city. Hong Kong people demand new and stimulating things. They are very nomadic, strolling from bar to bar in close proximity seems to appeal".

There are plenty of antique shops on Hollywood Road. The new ones are more like galleries, so the older ones have had to keep up on appearances. They are much better kept than when I first arrived. The antiques trade is far from new to the road. When it was built in 1844 it was close to the coastline and awash with sailors and foreign merchants selling antiques and artifacts they had collected in China.

"The world famous Hollywood Road and Wyndham Street antique district has been on the tourist and local collectors map for years," says Teresa Coleman of Teresa Coleman Fine Arts Ltd. "However in the absence of any government zoning regulations the area is rapidly disappearing".

Specializing in Oriental antiques and textiles, she first moved onto Wyndham Street in 1987. Hers is another gallery that later this year will move and make way for something hipper.

"Who knows what will replace me," she says. "It's unlikely to be an antiques gallery, more likely it will be a Starbucks, Seven Eleven, a restaurant or a bar".

Further down on Hollywood Road one place remains unchanged. Built in 1847, the Man Mo Temple, named after the God of Literature (Man) and the God of War (Mo), has been restored and repainted, but otherwise is the same.

What is changing is its surroundings. Just a few doors away, Contemporary by Angela Li stands out with its white-washed facade, large gleaming windows and uber-modern art. The gallery opened in 2008.

"This part of Hollywood Road has gone from sleepy during the week and only busy during the weekend to busy all week around, thanks to more restaurants, cafes and galleries opening nearby," explains owner Angela Li.

The swanky Centre Stage offers luxury apartments and M1NT, a private shareholders club opened in 2006, has swish parties and events for the rich and beautiful.

Restaurants and galleries are starting to venture even further down towards the Sheung Wan end of Hollywood Road.

Regularly passing through the area I have seen the new opening alongside the old; the avant-garde Cat Street Gallery that sprang-up in 2007. Recently a New York Italian-style restaurant took up residence in an old meat storage warehouse opposite Possession Street, where the British first set foot in 1941. Two weeks ago the modern, glass-fronted Java Java coffee and tea lounge opened along the part of Hollywood Road that once only sold wooden coffins.

To reconnect with nature, I often sit under the trees in Hollywood Road Park at the very end of the road. In the 1960s it was just a plot of land with a night market, cheap food, and entertainment, nicknamed the Poor Man's Nightclub. I wonder what the people who once danced and laughed here would think of the encroaching clubs and chic dining establishments nearby.

Nothing stays the same for long in Hong Kong.

hkskyline

October 10th, 2010, 06:06 PM

Artists protest at Cattle Depot clampdowns
Government limits on visitors and banners anger village tenants
9 October 2010
South China Morning Post

http://www.globalphotos.org/hongkong/20070804/IMG_9872.jpg

It's a sprawling arts compound home to more than a dozen tenants but the Cattle Depot Artist Village in To Kwa Wan is now off-limits to the public, photographers and even promotional banners.

Anger over entry restrictions and government orders to remove banners at the village has been brewing for a long time. Yesterday, a group of artists voiced their complaints in a protest outside the Government Property Agency in Wan Chai, which manages the compound.

The village is housed in a converted Grade Two Victorian-era compound of red-brick buildings and sheds that was once the customs and excise office's livestock quarantine station. Its 15 tenants include art groups and individuals housed in private studios.

The simmering tensions came to a head last month when the government ordered the removal of an artistic work - a banner made by conceptual artist Ching Chin-wai.

The banner accused the government of being high-handed in the management of the compound and was put up as part of a nine-day-long arts event, My To Kwa Wan, organised by four tenants.

Alvis Choi, assistant manager at Videotage, one of the four tenants, said the removal order was ridiculous. "Ching's banner was draped outside the door of a tenant. We got a letter from the agency saying that a clause of the tenancy agreement states that display of anything outside the premises of our shops is forbidden," Choi said.

Videotage said the government went so far as to request the removal of innocuous banners showing only the details of the event.

Another tenant, Choi Yau-chi, co-founder of 1a which specialises in visual arts, said they were also frustrated by restricted entry to the compound.

"The security policy, which forbids walk-in visitors and allows entry to only those who get invitations from the artists, creates an image that the Cattle Depot is user-unfriendly," she said.

In addition to restricted entry, photographic activity is also forbidden, with security guards buttonholing visitors at the sight of cameras.

Protest leader Ching Chin-wai said security had been beefed up recently.

"The tenancy agreement states that entry is restricted to [invited] visitors only. But the agency did not implement the clause in the past," Ching said.

"Over the past several months, security has been so tight that security staff have registered visitors' ID information. Which arts village on earth would bar entry to the public and tourists?"

The property agency confirmed that tenants could not display banners outside their units without prior approval.

"The depot is not open to the public as it is not equipped with fire safety equipment, lighting, emergency access and hygiene facilities that meet the [licensing rules for] places of public entertainment," an agency spokesman said.

"For security and management reasons, only visitors with the consent of the tenants are allowed to enter the premises. In order to avoid any nuisance to tenants or their visitors, photography is not allowed in the open spaces at Cattle Depot.

"The Development Bureau is planning to take over the management of the Cattle Depot The existing tenancy arrangements are to be maintained a tender exercise to identify a new management company is expected to take place soon."

hkskyline

October 19th, 2010, 08:03 AM

Grading system leaves historic site to decay
18 October 2010
SCMP

Elements of a grade one historic building of the former British garrison in the heart of the city have fallen into a dilapidated state, with part of a pillar at the entrance missing and the stone gatehouse full of rubbish and used as a storeroom.

The Old British Military Hospital in Mid-Levels, which opened in 1907, was given the grade one rating by the Antiquities and Monuments Office in December last year, but the entrance and gatehouse were not included.

The three-storey, red-brick hospital, built in the Edwardian neo-classical style, seems to be well preserved, but its entrance appears to be abandoned, overgrown and decaying.

Experts say this highlights the failure of the present process to take into account "associated elements" when grading historic buildings, depriving important structures of protection.

The upper part of a stone pillar at the hospital's entrance, at the junction of Borrett and Bowen roads, has gone missing.

The stone gatehouse is full of garbage and shows signs of internal water leaks. It is being used as a storeroom by a contract cleaner for the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department (FEHD).

Joggers who regularly run along Bowen Road said they noticed part of the pillar go missing this year. One suggested the government should clean up the entrance and erect a plaque about the historic building.

"The stone gatehouse and the two pillars ... are yet to be graded," the Antiquities and Monuments Office (AMO) said.

The Government Property Agency is responsible for leasing out the hospital, which is occupied by a number of non-governmental organisations. But the gatehouse and entrance pillars are outside the boundary of the site managed by the agency. The gatehouse is maintained and used by the FEHD, the AMO said.

Antiquities Advisory Board member Dr Lee Ho-yin, who is director of the architectural conservation programme at the University of Hong Kong, said the entrance gatehouse and pillars should be considered part of the historic building. "The starting point of the building is significant," he said. "The gatehouse of the old hospital, like the guard post at the entrance of Government House, should be considered part of the historic architectural complex."

This was an example of the grading process overlooking elements of historic sites, he said. The conservation assessment process concentrated too much on the building itself and overlooked associated elements "such as the entrance and old wall which are also part of the architectural complex", Dr Lee said.

He cited redevelopment of the historic former marine police headquarters in Tsim Sha Tsui, now a hotel and mall called Heritage 1881, where the original landscape, an important "associated element" of the site, was not protected by the grading and was completely changed.

The board planned to establish standard guidelines for assessment of associated elements of historic buildings after it concluded its present assessment of 1,444 historic buildings, he said.

The AMO said it had received a suggestion that the gatehouse and pillars of the hospital be included on the list of new items to be assessed by the Antiquities Advisory Board after the conclusion of its assessment of the 1,444 historic buildings.

Central and Western district councillor Stephen Chan Chit-kwai said the pillars and gatehouse should have been included in the assessment and grading of the building.

Historian Ko Tim-keung, an expert in military sites and battlefields in Hong Kong, said of the hospital: "It is part of Hong Kong history of the first world war period, and it was used for wounded soldiers and sick British prisoners of war during the Japanese occupation."

He said documents told many moving stories of the military surgeons and patients of the hospital, which was superseded in 1967 with the opening of the British Military Hospital in Kowloon. The old hospital now houses Mother's Care, Helping Hands and the Carmel School.

hkskyline

October 25th, 2010, 05:42 PM

Ruling bad news for battles to save tong lau
25 October 2010
South China Morning Post

A Lands Tribunal ruling has cast a shadow over attempts to save old but well-maintained walk-up buildings.

An owner facing the compulsory sale of his flat sought to have the building, designed by a renowned Chinese architect, graded as historic to save it from redevelopment. He applied to the tribunal for it to postpone a decision on a sale order until antiquities authorities could consider grading the building. But the tribunal refused, saying a grading would not influence its decision.

Gordon Li Kit-sang's flat is in a seven-storey building at 8 Observatory Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, which he says has heritage value, along with Nos 2, 4, 6, 10 and 12. They were designed by Robert Fan (pictured) one of the most celebrated Chinese architects of the past century.

But the tribunal said any grading by the Antiquities Advisory Board would have no legal force on any order to force Li to sell his flat.

Most such low-rise buildings, or tong lau, were built in the 1950s and '60s. Unlike new flats whose square footage is inflated by clubhouses and other facilities, buyers of tong lau get the square feet they pay for. As a result, more and more homebuyers seek them despite their age.

But tong lau have increasingly become targets for developers since the government lowered from 90 per cent to 80 per cent the ownership threshold at which a developer can force hold-outs in buildings older than 50 years to sell to them.

Four private companies have acquired more than 90 per cent of the six blocks in Observatory Road. They have applied to the tribunal for a compulsory sale order on Li's flat. The antiquities board has declined Li's application for a historic grading on his building.

Wong Ho-yin, of the concern group People Planning in Action, said the tribunal's response was alarming. More than 20 tong lau have been graded, but Li's case made clear that no such grading would affect the tribunal in ruling on whether compulsory sales should go ahead.

"Although [the board] did not give a grading in this case, the case made it clear that any grading would not be binding," he said. "There is no provision in the law about buildings' heritage value. I'm afraid that in future, private residences, especially tong lau in old districts, could end up being sold compulsorily."

Buildings can be graded one, two or three on a declining scale of heritage value, but only those declared a monument are legally protected.

Li believed the buildings' historic value went beyond the fact Fan designed them. They were inhabited by the families of British servicemen who worked at the former Chatham Road Camp. Architectural details such as flower boxes on the front wall and wooden handrails on stairways were historically important, he said.

The antiquities board agreed with him on these points at a recent meeting, but found them not sufficient to support a grading, saying the buildings were not signature works of Fan.

The tribunal told Li last month, before the board met, that it would not adjourn the case to wait for the grading result because a grading would carry no legal weight.

"I feel so helpless. I can only continue to fight in court," Li said.

The tribunal will consider the compulsory sale case in February.

hkskyline

October 27th, 2010, 01:31 PM

Flat-out generous
28 September 2010
The Standard

Tenants of shabby tenements on Wing Lee Street - made famous by the award-winning film Echoes of the Rainbow - have been offered 400-square-foot flats in Sheung Wan at less than a quarter of the market rent.

Some flats in the Urban Renewal Authority's 23-story Sheung Wan block even have harbor views.

A property agent said rents for similar apartments are around HK$7,700, but Wing Lee Street tenants can move in for just HK$1,800 a month.

In offering the HK$10 million resettlement package to 30 households, URA chairman Barry Cheung Chun- yuen said the rent is at a similar level to public housing, but insists it will not set a precedent or increase the authority's financial burden.

"It's the first time - as well as an exceptional case - for us to relocate residents who are not affected by redevelopment projects," Cheung said. "We see the arrangement as a social responsibility to urgently improve residents' poor housing conditions." He does not regard the offer as "too generous."

The URA block, Shun Shing Mansion on Des Voeux Road West, offers around 100 flats for those affected by redevelopment schemes on Hong Kong Island such as those in Graham and Lee Tung streets.

The authority revised its redevelopment plan for Wing Lee Street in March after Echoes of the Rainbow poignantly portrayed the 12 tenement buildings.

Under the new approach, the authority will preserve all buildings on Wing Lee Street and maintain the terrace ambience of "Old Hong Kong."

Cheung said the resettlement plan will become effective after a Town Planning Board meeting next month is expected to remove Wing Lee Street from the list of redevelopment schemes. Apart from the favorable rent, households who choose to move to the block will not have to pay rent for six months and will be given a relocation allowance of about HK$7,400 for each family.

Their rental contracts will be renewed every two years. The authority will not ask residents to move out until they are allocated public housing.

Meanwhile, tenants who choose to remain where they are will be given up to HK$80,000 to maintain their flats.

Kwong Shum Sui-heung, who rents a flat on the street for HK$4,500 a month, said her family of four visited the URA block in Sheung Wan but decided not to move there.

"The authorities pledged to allocate us public housing when they first decided to redevelop the area 13 years ago," she said.

"Another temporary relocation will only increase our financial burden. We have no choice but to wait."

Ho Hei-wah, a member of the Steering Committee on Review of the Urban Renewal Strategy, said owners who prefer to stay put have received the least benefits in the resettlement package.

"Most of the tenement buildings are more than 50 years old. The one-off renovation subsidies are far from enough to maintain a safe building structure in the long run," he said.

Rayson Yip Ching-long, who owns a printing company on the street, said he welcomes the provision of subsidies for renovating his "heavily dripping balcony" but hopes the URA will acquire his place at a reasonable price to help him buy a replacement unit for his business. About 20 households in the street held a meeting last night to discuss options.

A URA spokesman said its staff will visit residents tomorrow.

hkskyline

October 29th, 2010, 02:01 PM

Relics of city's dairy industry under threat
25 October 2010
SCMP

They are part of Hong Kong's heritage, yet lie damaged and almost forgotten.

Hidden among hundreds of huts in Pok Fu Lam village are a stone-walled manure pit and a round tower that were part of the city's largest dairy farm, where production dated back to 1886.

Conservationists want to know why the two farm structures on government land have been neglected for many years, while three structures on the other side of the road - part of the same cluster set up by the Dairy Farm company in 1886 - were given a historic grading and maintained.

An octagon-shaped cowshed and the main office building, given grade-two ratings, were leased to the Academy of Performing Arts, which uses them as a theatre and classrooms.

The third structure, a two-storey Western-style house used as the company's senior staff quarters, has a grade-one rating and is yet to be tendered out for a new use.

The Antiquities and Monuments Office (AMO) recognised them because "they serve as reminders of the success story of a Hong Kong enterprise".

The stone-walled manure pit, on a hillside at the Pokfulam Public Riding School site, is one of the few remaining such pits. Villagers still call it "cow-dung lake".

Less than 300 metres away, slightly up the hillside, is a silo that was used to store cow fodder. It stands overgrown and the Water Supplies Department has blocked an access path for ground works. It is hardly noticeable because a disused eight-storey Dairy Farm staff quarters stands in front of it.

The two relics do not appear on a list of 1,444 historic sites drawn up by the AMO in 2008, and the office has no record of them.

According to the office and a book, Dairy Farm 1886-1986 by Diane Stormont, Scottish doctor Patrick Manson in 1886 persuaded five influential businessmen in the city, including Paul Chater, to invest in a farm to produce a safe supply of cows' milk, which was then of little interest to local Chinese.

The company settled on a 120-hectare hilly site in Pok Fu Lam, well away from disease-ridden slums in Sheung Wan, with capital of HK$30,000 and a herd of 80 dairy cows imported from Britain. In 1983, the company sold off the herd and parts of the farmland were developed into housing estates, including Baguio Villas.

Steven Chui Chu-kwan, who lives in the village, said he found the pit damaged two weeks ago. "The pit was intact with a concrete curved roof for all those years. But that day I saw a man putting metal sheets over the structure, and the roof was gone.

"I suspect he is illegally occupying the place as there have been quite a few illegal immigrants here in the past," Chui said. He was worried that the silo would also be destroyed.

A visit by the South China Morning Post last Wednesday found window frames and a door had been installed. Bricks and soil were laid outside. No one answered the door.

Gerald Kuh, general manager of the Riding for the Disabled Association, which rents the riding school site from the government, said none of his staff or agents damaged the manure pit.

"We have left that structure empty since we rented the land in 1975. But the site is so big that we cannot fully control people coming in and out. We are organising a joint site visit with the Lands Department," Kuh said.

The department is yet to give a reply on what action it is taking over the pit's damage and occupation.

Chui, 40, who has done research on the Dairy Farm relics and interviewed retired farm managers and workers, said the two items were part of a recycling process for cattle farming: the pit stored cow dung for making fertiliser, which was used to grow elephant grass as fodder.

The silo, which he said was the only survivor of seven similar structures, stored surplus fodder for winter.

"I recall the days when I was a kid. The hills were all grass, no trees, for grazing the cattle. Each herd had a manure pit in different shapes. It was so idyllic, you felt like you were in Scotland rather than in Hong Kong.

"The manure pit and the silo are as significant as other graded items in the farm cluster as they also contributed to the production chain. Why are they treated differently?" he asked.

The Pok Fu Lam Village Cultural Landscape Concern Group, of which he is a member, is proposing that all the sites be linked as a heritage trail.

The Development Bureau said the bureau had not received any suggestions for grading the manure pit and the silo.

"In view of public interest in these structures, the AMO will carry out a site visit and research for them in due course," a spokeswoman said. "If they are of heritage value, we will put them forward to an expert panel and the Antiquities Advisory Board for consideration of the need for a grading."

Antiquities Advisory Board member Dr Lee Ho-yin said the two structures deserved a grading: "If you look at them piece by piece, it's nothing. But the relics should be seen altogether as an integral cluster, which tells important stories about our early society."

He said Hong Kong should adopt the stance of Unesco, which has promoted the idea of recognising past important industrial structures as heritage, as little had been done in this aspect apart from grading the Cattle Depot in Kowloon City and structures of several reservoirs. "After all, historic buildings are not just those associated with important figures or those of aesthetic value."

hkskyline

November 7th, 2010, 03:45 AM

Former residents sought to bring estate's history to life
1 November 2010
South China Morning Post

The Youth Hostels Association has traced 10 former residents of the city's first public housing block that it is revitalising for hostel use, but it says it needs to find many more to help create an on-site folklore museum.

With the renovation of Mei Ho House in Shek Kip Mei due to start early next year, the association is building up content for the museum to showcase the history of the old public housing estate.

"We need many more people to join our 'alumni network' to give oral history accounts about life in the resettlement blocks," the association's general manager, Iris Tsang Hoi-kee, said. "The history will be an essential part of the museum planned for the hostel and will distinguish the heritage site from other hostels of ours."

As well as the 10 former tenants of Mei Ho House, the association has found 38 others from now-demolished neighbouring blocks and from resettlement buildings of a similar age in Sham Shui Po.

Mei Ho House, rated as a grade-one historic building, is the only survivor of the first eight blocks of the Shek Kip Mei Estate built in 1954, which marked the beginning of the colonial government's public housing scheme. The scheme was launched a year after a fire in the area made thousands of squatters homeless. Residents shared a communal toilet on each floor until renovation in the 1970s.

The association won the site under a government heritage revitalisation scheme. In the past year it has conducted research on the site's history and obtained Town Planning Board approval for its conversion plan.

Tsang said the former residents would be invited to serve as tour guides, to share with hostel guests their stories of life on the estate and to take part in the hostel's activities during festival gatherings. A primary school near the estate is helping the association with the search.

"We appeal to anyone who has lived in Mei Ho House, Shek Kip Mei Estate or Sham Shui Po before to join us. Those who are interested in local history and culture are also welcome," Tsang said.

Past residents in touch with the organisation come from different generations, including some who experienced the fire and moved into the housing block as children. They told the organisation of growing up in a crowded living environment, but also of bonding between neighbours much stronger than it is today.

They donated for display photographs and items they used when living in the block, including three sewing machines, school writing pads and milk cans.

With capital of HK$192 million and an operating seed fund of HK$4.4 million from the government, the block will be converted into a hostel with 124 guestrooms and will open in 2012.

Some rooms will have special features, such as preserved iron gates seen on old public housing estates. There will be no dormitories. A museum will showcase two sample flats with original layouts and old furniture, and a communal bathroom.

Those interested in joining the alumni network can call 2788 1638 or fill in a form on the YHA's website.

hkskyline

November 13th, 2010, 08:24 AM

Four historic buildings declared monuments
Friday, November 12, 2010
Government Press Release

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The Tung Wah Museum at Kwong Wah Hospital in Yau Ma Tei has been declared a monument under the Antiquities and Monuments Ordinance. The museum building is in the Chinese Renaissance style, characterised by a composition of Chinese and Western architectural features.

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The Man Mo Temple Compound in Sheung Wan has been declared a monument under the Antiquities and Monuments Ordinance. The magnificent Temple is a typical example of traditional Chinese vernacular architecture. It is exquisitely decorated with ceramic figurines, granite and wood carvings, plastered mouldings and murals, reflecting superb traditional craftsmanship.

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The Tang Kwong U Ancestral Hall in Kam Tin, Yuen Long has been declared a monument under the Antiquities and Monuments Ordinance. The Ancestral Hall is a Qing vernacular building, constituting a two-hall-one-courtyard plan of three bays.

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The Kom Tong Hall in Central has been declared a monument under the Antiquities and Monuments Ordinance. Kom Tong Hall was built in the Edwardian classical style, featuring red brick walls, granite dressings around windows and doors, and ornate ironwork on balconies.

The Government today (November 12) announced that the Antiquities Authority declared the Tung Wah Museum at Kwong Wah Hospital in Yau Ma Tei, the Man Mo Temple Compound in Sheung Wan, the Tang Kwong U Ancestral Hall in Kam Tin, Yuen Long and the Kom Tong Hall in Central as monuments under the Antiquities and Monuments Ordinance. The notice of the declaration was gazetted today.

The Tung Wah Museum on Waterloo Road was originally the Main Hall of Kwong Wah Hospital. The founding of Kwong Wah Hospital was initiated by the directors of the Tung Wah Hospital and the community leaders of Kowloon. Opened in 1911, Kwong Wah Hospital was the first hospital founded in Kowloon and provided both Western and Chinese medical services to the community. In 1931, Tung Wah Hospital, Kwong Wah Hospital and Tung Wah Eastern Hospital were amalgamated into a single entity, "Tung Wah Group of Hospitals" (TWGHs). In 1970, the centenary year of TWGHs, the Main Hall of Kwong Wah Hospital was converted into the Tung Wah Museum for conservation of the relics and the invaluable archives of the TWGHs. The Museum was subsequently opened to the public in 1993.

The museum building is of Chinese Renaissance style characterised by a composition of Chinese and Western architectural features. Its Chinese style is clearly demonstrated by its Chinese ancestral hall and the decorations at the front elevation, whereas Western architectural elements are displayed through the bull's eye windows and segmental arched windows on the sides and rear elevation, as well as the Western fanlights and Queen post trusses inside the museum.

The Man Mo Temple Compound on Hollywood Road was built approximately between 1847 and 1862 by wealthy Chinese merchants. The Temple has imperative local historical and cultural value, representing the social organisation and religious practices of the Chinese community in old Hong Kong. The main hall of the Man Mo Temple was built for the worship of the God of Literature and the God of Marital Arts; the Lit Shing Kung adjacent to the main hall was built for the worship of all heavenly gods and Kung Sor was constructed as a meeting place for resolving matters related to the Chinese community in the area. The Temple was officially entrusted to the Tung Wah Hospital with the enactment of the Man Mo Temple Ordinance in 1908. Directors of TWGHs and community celebrities congregate in the Temple every year for the Autumn Sacrificial Rites to pay homage to the God of Literature and the God of Marital Arts as well as to pray for the prosperity of Hong Kong.

The magnificent Temple is a typical example of traditional Chinese vernacular architecture. It is exquisitely decorated with ceramic figurines, granite and wood carvings, plastered mouldings and murals, reflecting superb traditional craftsmanship.

Tang Kwong U Ancestral Hall in Shui Tau, Kam Tin, also known as Loi Shing Tong, was built by Mr Tang Tseung-luk in the 40th year of Kangxi Reign (i.e. the year of 1701) of the Qing Dynasty. It was built to commemorate Mr Tang Kwong-u, the 17th-generation ancestor of the Tang clan. The Ancestral Hall underwent a large scale renovation in the 47th year of the Qianlong Reign (i.e. the year 1782) of the Qing Dynasty with donations from the clansmen. With the consent of the owners, a full restoration was carried out in 1995 by the Antiquities and Monuments Office. The scope of the full restoration included removal of recent additions and restoration of the timber roof structure, plastered mouldings and timber carvings, bringing the ancestral hall to its original splendid condition.

The Ancestral Hall is a Qing vernacular building, having a two-hall-one-courtyard plan of three bays. There is a side chamber on each side of the open courtyard. The Ancestral Hall was constructed of green bricks with timber rafters, purlins and a clay tiled roof. The ridges, wall friezes and fascia boards are richly decorated with auspicious patterns and carvings.

Kom Tong Hall on Castle Road was built in 1914 as a private residence by Mr Ho Kom-tong, a prominent businessman, as well as a well-known community leader and philanthropist. He was at the centre of the Chinese and Eurasian commercial communities at the beginning of the 20th century and one of the most influential figures of his time. The Government acquired Kom Tong Hall in 2004 for preservation of the invaluable built heritage and subsequently established the Dr Sun Yat-sen Museum there. The Museum has been open to the public since December 2006.

Kom Tong Hall was built in the Edwardian classical style, featuring red brick walls, granite dressings around windows and doors, and ornate ironwork on balconies. It is one of the first buildings in Hong Kong to have been built with a steel frame and concealed in-wall electrical wiring. Internally, the rich teakwood panelling abounds everywhere and the ceilings of the main rooms are ornately decorated with moulded plastered panels highlighted in gold leaf. Colourful stained glass windows in Art Nouveau patterns of the period are situated overlooking the main staircase and in other notable positions.

The four declared monuments are open for public visit. Free guided tours will be provided later for the public to enhance their understanding of the monument buildings and the related local history.

Information on the four monuments is available on the heritage conservation website of the Development Bureau (www.heritage.gov.hk).

hkskyline

November 19th, 2010, 12:26 PM

Banyans get the chop at historic village moat
Trees removed because they harmed fung shui
18 November 2010
South China Morning Post

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Banyan trees outside a 600-year-old walled village in Yuen Long were removed for what residents say are fung shui and environmental reasons, just as the government begins a clean-up of the village's historic moat.

The situation at Kat Hing Wai in Kam Tin sparked alarm on two fronts with environmentalists worried about the removal of the trees, and heritage conservationists calling for the moat to be properly preserved.

Police were alerted when the trees were found cut down last week but said they could do nothing because the banyans were on land owned by the village.

Kat Hing Wai representative Tang Wai-fuk said the trees were removed because their roots dug deep into the ground, destabilising surrounding buildings and harming the fung shui.

He said the villagers discussed their removal with the Home Affairs Department first.

The department did not confirm the discussions, but said the work on the moat, which will be cleared of dirt, drained and beautified, did not require the removal of the trees.

Peter Li Siu-man, campaign manager of the Conservancy Association, said the moat work was part of a minor improvement programme in the village that did not require environmental assessment.

"Being a minor work project does not necessarily mean they are environment-friendly and desirable in terms of landscape character," said Li, who believed the trees could have been kept without affecting the project or the villagers.

Henry Lo Ka-yu, a researcher in architectural conservation at Chinese University, said the remains of the moat at Kat Hing Wai were important as most village moats in Hong Kong had been filled up or were gone. He said the moats originally served for defence and fire-fighting but were neglected when they were no longer needed.

"Many of these redundant moats have been polluted and filled for development after they lost their function," he said.

Moats were not regarded as part of the historic structures of a village but should be better protected, he said.

Tang said the villagers were "extremely careful" before removing the trees. "We don't want to be held liable and that's why we talked to the Home Affairs Department beforehand," he said.

Tang said the existing moat was the only remaining portion of the original moat that used to encircle the walled village, known for its resistance to British colonial authorities.

"Most of the moat has been filled up and we are told by officials that it is better to keep this remaining part. Otherwise, we would have already filled it in," he said.

Tang said the moat became an environmental nuisance over the years as wastewater was discharged into it from houses developed on the other side of a road.

In a HK$1.2 million project, dirt will be cleared from the bottom of the moat, underground pipes will be installed to divert wastewater to a proper collection channel and the area will be beautified with trees planted along the moat.

hkskyline

December 15th, 2010, 02:36 PM

LCQ9: Conservation of Wing Lee Street
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Government Press Release

Following is a question by the Hon Ip Kwok-him and a written reply by the Secretary for Development, Mrs Carrie Lam, in the Legislative Council today (December 15):

Question:

The Urban Renewal Authority (URA) publicly proposed "an alternative implementation concept for conserving Wing Lee Street" (the alternative implementation concept) on March 16 this year for reference by the Town Planning Board (TPB). At its meeting on March 19 this year, TPB rejected URA's application in relation to the Master Layout Plan for the Staunton Street/Wing Lee Street Development Scheme submitted earlier by URA, but it agreed that preservation of all the tenement buildings at Wing Lee Street as proposed in the alternative implementation concept was the right direction. It has been nine months since URA announced the alternative implementation concept, but TPB has not yet decided on the way forward for Wing Lee Street, and the affected residents have not yet received any compensation or rehousing offers from URA. In this connection, will the Government inform this Council:

(a) whether it knows the progress to date of the alternative implementation concept proposed by URA, and whether the Government and URA still intend to achieve "complete preservation" of Wing Lee Street;

(b) given that the Chairman of URA announced to the media in September this year a series of special measures for assisting the tenants and property owners of Wing Lee Street, whether it knows the timetable for launching these special measures, and whether URA will continue to offer voluntary acquisition to the property owners at Wing Lee Street; and

(c) whether it knows when TPB will consider and decide on the planning for Wing Lee Street; whether TPB will re-consider the planning for the other two development sites under the Staunton Street/Wing Lee Street Development Scheme, apart from Wing Lee Street?

Reply:

President,

The Staunton Street/Wing Lee Street redevelopment project (H19) is one of the 25 redevelopment projects announced but yet to be commenced by the former Land Development Corporation, which the Urban Renewal Authority (URA) has taken over upon its establishment in 2001. The URA has undertaken to give priority to the commencement of these 25 projects. H19 covers Sites A, B and C, and Wing Lee Street is at Site A.

The URA commenced H19 in 2003, the planning parameters for which were revised after legal proceedings took place. As a result, it was not until 2008 that the URA issued acquisition offers for the project. During this period, there were strong community demands for the conservation of buildings with architectural interest and the local culture. In response, in November 2008, the URA proposed a conservation-led redevelopment approach for implementation of this project with a view to preserving the terrace ambience of Wing Lee Street, through abandoning the original high-density development, giving up on high-rise buildings, and only demolishing some of the old tenement buildings which were proposed to be rebuilt as buildings with similar height and form. Under this approach, the plot ratio of the whole project was reduced from 8 as permitted under the Planning Brief to not more than 4.5.

In response to the views of the local community and the public, in March 2010, the URA proposed an alternative concept to implement the conservation of Wing Lee Street, that is, to adopt a "complete conservation" approach. This new concept was supported in principle by the Town Planning Board (TPB).

My reply to the three-part question is as follows:

(a) In view of the support from TPB and the generally positive response of the community, the URA has not changed its "complete conservation" implementation concept for Wing Lee Street. This concept is also supported by the Development Bureau.

According to this implementation concept, as follow-up, URA would provide the TPB with supplementary information, namely, information on the conditions of the existing buildings at Wing Lee Street, the costs involved in rehabilitating these tenement buildings and the special measures adopted by the URA to assist owners and tenants at Wing Lee Street. Later on, the TPB would consider how to amend the approved H19 Development Scheme Plan in order to conserve Wing Lee Street within Site A. Meanwhile, the URA would continue to negotiate voluntary acquisition with all the affected owners within the project. The URA would also continue to make compensation/rehousing arrangements for the affected tenants in line with its prevailing policy. Up to end-November 2010, the URA has successfully acquired 12 out of the 24 property interests at Wing Lee Street. There is another property owner who has just accepted the URA's acquisition offer and sale and purchase for this case is under way. The URA has also completed or is in the process of completing compensation/rehousing arrangements for some nine affected tenants.

As a "complete conservation" approach will be adopted for the buildings at Wing Lee Street within Site A of the redevelopment project, and given that some owners wish to conserve their buildings on their own and are reluctant to sell to the URA, the Development Bureau has indicated to the URA that it is inappropriate to go about conserving Wing Lee Street through invoking the Lands Resumption Ordinance.

(b) In view of the historical background and the uniqueness of H19, the URA announced in September 2010 the following three special measures to assist the owners/tenants at Wing Lee Street:

(1) Measures to improve the living environment of those tenants whose landlords do not want to sell

(i) The URA will rent out to affected tenants the flats in the URA rehousing block at No 466, Des Voeux Road West, at a rate comparable to the public housing rental rates. For instance, the URA will charge rental at around $1,800 for a 330-square-foot unit. The URA will also provide a six-month rent-free period and offer removal allowance for each tenant household. Take the example of a three-person household, the allowance will amount to about $7,400. If the tenants are allocated public housing units or they eventually move out from No 466, Des Voeux Road West, the URA will provide them with another removal allowance. The URA will also reimburse them for the rentals they have paid for their stay at No 466, Des Voeux Road West, up to a maximum of six months' rent or 25% of the amount of rental they will have paid;

(ii) The URA will provide a "Home Environment Improvement Allowance" ranging from $40,000 to $80,000 for every tenant household who opts to stay at Wing Lee Street to improve their living environment. The URA will also provide them with an allowance equivalent to two months of their current rental to support them in finding temporary accommodation elsewhere when their flats are under renovation; and

(iii) The URA will also provide a relocation allowance to tenants who opt to move elsewhere. For example, a three-person household will receive about $7,400. These tenant households may also receive an allowance ranging from $40,000 to $80,000 for improving their living environment.

(2) "Special Rehabilitation Allowance" offered to property owners participating in the conservation of Wing Lee Street

(i) The URA will provide a "Special Allowance for Rehabilitation of Common Areas" to the property owners at Wing Lee Street. If the owners agree to carry out rehabilitation, the URA will provide a subsidy up to half of the total rehabilitation cost. The owners of buildings in single ownership can draw a maximum subsidy up to $200,000;

(ii) As regards those buildings at site which are jointly held by the URA and other individual owners, the URA will liaise with the owners concerned to undertake rehabilitation work of the common areas of the buildings. The URA will offer them the "Special Rehabilitation Allowance", subject to a maximum subsidy of $200,000 per building. The amount of allowance receivable by each owner will be calculated on a pro-rata basis according to the proportion of undivided shares the owner holds; and

(iii) In addition, owner-occupiers who succeed in applying for the allowance mentioned above will be eligible to apply for a "Home Environment Improvement Allowance" ranging from $40,000 to $80,000 per household.

The URA has been undertaking preparatory work for relocation of Wing Lee Street tenants to No 466, Des Voeux Road West, over the past few months.

When making the earlier announcement, the URA indicated that the measures mentioned above would not be implemented until the TPB were to decide to invoke the town planning procedures to seek the agreement of the Chief Executive in Council to refer back the Development Scheme Plan of H19 for excision of Wing Lee Street from the boundary of the plan. On the basis of the "people-oriented" approach, the Development Bureau has urged the URA to implement the above-mentioned measures as soon as possible to give early comfort to the affected tenants of Wing Lee Street, and without waiting for the completion of further deliberation and related procedures for revision of the Development Scheme Plan by the TPB. In other words, the URA will relocate those tenants who wish to move to No 466, Des Voeux Road West, as soon as possible. As for those tenants who do not opt to move to No 466, Des Voeux Road West, but who want to apply for the "Home Environment Improvement Allowance", the URA will issue the allowances as soon as possible.

Nevertheless, under prevailing policy, the URA will continue to approach the owners for voluntary acquisition before Wing Lee Street is excised from the H19 Development Scheme Plan. The URA will also explain to them the above-mentioned special arrangements for assisting owners to rehabilitate their old buildings. Once the TPB decides to excise Wing Lee Street from the H19 Development Scheme Plan and completes the gazetting procedures, the URA will stop acquiring the properties at Wing Lee Street.

(c) To facilitate the TPB's review of the H19 Development Scheme Plan, the URA has provided information on the structural conditions of the existing buildings at Wing Lee Street, the costs involved in their rehabilitation, as well as the special arrangements to assist owners and tenants of Wing Lee Street. The Planning Department (PlanD) is consulting the departments concerned and considering the relevant information. PlanD will make a submission to the TPB for consideration in early 2011 and it is expected that the scope for consideration will be confined to Wing Lee Street at Site A of H19, the reason being that the Metro Planning Committee of the TPB had, when deliberating on the project on March 19, 2010, indicated that the proposed use and development parameters of the other two sites (that is, Site B and Site C) outside Wing Lee Street were acceptable and that there would be no need to revisit the planning requirements of these two sites. In fact, it is in the pubic interest as well as in the interest of most of the owners and tenants of H19 that the project, which is a redevelopment cum conservation project, be completed as early as possible.

hkskyline

December 18th, 2010, 05:11 AM

Voice from past echoes in the future
15 December 2010
The Standard

``We pull down our buildings so quickly that not one has yet, in the 90-year history of the company, ever stood long enough to become of historic value.''

So remarked Trevor Bedford, then general manager of Hongkong Land, in 1978, in a speech to the Hong Kong Heritage Society.

It might seem surprising that we had a heritage association in those days, let alone that one of Hong Kong's biggest property companies took an interest in the subject. It makes interesting reading.

Bedford, a former government official, was forward-looking. He anticipated that the ``ladder streets'' between Central, or Sheung Wan, and the Mid-Levels and their low-rise tenements would become popular among tourists and future generations _ something that started to happen in the mid-1990s.

He urged the government to set up bodies to protect historical buildings and improve property management in older areas, both of which are now taking place gradually.

He forecast that Central would be livelier after 6pm, something his own company helped bring about by including malls and restaurants in office developments such as the Landmark and Exchange Square. He also looked forward to providing more leisure space and pedestrian zones in certain areas of the district, which, unfortunately, has yet to happen.

He summed up by saying that tomorrow's heritage is also important. When older buildings were demolished, he said, we had to think carefully about what we replaced them with _ from a lifestyle point of view. Perhaps, we have been partially successful in this regard, but it is a point worth remembering. Bernard Charnwut Chan, chairman of the Antiquities Advisory Board, sees culture from all perspectives.

hkskyline

January 3rd, 2011, 04:41 AM

Sino Land, Emperor eye tenement arts site
31 December 2010
South China Morning Post

The Urban Renewal Authority is looking for an experienced operator to run its first arts project at six pre-war tenement buildings in Mallory Street, Wan Chai.

Among the nine cultural organisations and professional institutes invited by the authority to tender for the project yesterday, Sino Land and Emperor Group are the largest commercial companies to have expressed interest in running the tenement buildings.

The two giants formed an individual company, Creative Heritage Foundation and Profit Valley, to compete with other organisations, including the Fringe Club, Hong Kong Arts Centre, Zuni Icosahedron, Osage Art and Ideas, Red Goodss, the Hong Kong Institute of Architects and Hong Kong Architecture Centre.

The Emperor Group, which runs the city's main entertainment business and grooms pop singers, has its headquarters located next to the Mallory Street site.

Part of its proposal for the site is to set aside space for karaoke.

Sino Land has experience in revitalising historic buildings. One recent example is the redevelopment of the old Tai O police station into a boutique hotel.

The old tenement buildings will be turned into an artists' commune, with each of the 20 flats shared by more than one art group to create round-the-clock activity.

For example, a studio could be used by a dance company for practice during the day and by a painter running classes in the evening.

Rentals in the initial years would be fixed at a low level to attract more users, the authority's managing director, Quinn Law Yee-kwan, said.

"To avoid too many commercial elements, the operator will not share profits with the authority," he said. The operator would be given a management fee to run the place and costs would be paid by the authority.

An open space of 300 square metres will be created through the demolition of four tenements, but their facades will be preserved and linked to the rest of the cluster through two footbridges. The open space will also serve as a performance venue.

Some ground-floor flats planned to be cafes will be reserved for artists to hold talks and exhibit their works. These activities will be free of charge. The operation is expected to begin in 2012.

hkskyline

January 12th, 2011, 02:59 AM

History followed along building lines
The Standard
Wednesday, January 12, 2011

It is not only ordinary residents who are showing an ever-keener interest in old buildings, for academics are also conducting more studies on the rise of urban Hong Kong.

One example is a series of pamphlets by members of the Chinese University of Hong Kong and published by the Conservancy Association Centre for Heritage.

Urban Transformation in Shau Kei Wan (the others are on Central and Sheung Wan) is not simply concerned with collective memory, which for most people is what built heritage is about.

Instead, it examines building typology.

As that suggests, it concerns different types of buildings.

Just as layers of rock tell geologists about Earth's past, so we can trace the history of a neighborhood by looking at how architecture changes.

Briefly, the pamphlet looks at low-rise apartment buildings that date from the 1950s in Shau Kei Wan and are still seen in a few locations in the district.

They are simple in design and were clearly built for a working-class population who could not afford luxury. But there is space - some have balconies, for example - to remind us that this was a fairly low-density neighborhood.

Residential buildings from the 1960s are taller, 10 or 12-story structures.

We still see such buildings elsewhere, in North Point, Causeway Bay and over in Kowloon City.

Hong Kong was growing in the 1950s. Later decades saw buildings of 30 floors or more as we entered today's high- density, heavily developed era.

It is the story of a place coming of age, and it is written in concrete all around us.

Bernard Charnwut Chan, chairman of the Antiquities Advisory Board, sees culture from all perspectives.

hkskyline

January 18th, 2011, 05:03 AM

Calls grow to save Peak mansion
The Standard
Tuesday, January 18, 2011

The Democratic Party has joined calls to save a century-old European-style mansion at The Peak from being redeveloped into a luxury residential site.

The party's Central and Western district councillors yesterday handed in a petition to the Antiquities Advisory Board to press their demand.

Owner Juli May, a Hutchison Whampoa subsidiary, plans to redevelop the two-story mansion at 23 Coombe Road, pictured, built in 1887, into a modern luxury residential site.

The Buildings Department approved the plans in October.

Temporarily rated a Grade 3 historic building, the mansion is now called Carrick and on lease.

A Grade 3 rating means it is desirable for the owner to preserve some form of the building, or take alternative steps if preservation is not practical, such as making photographic records.

The one-month public consultation on the temporary rating ends on Friday.

The Democrats urged that the mansion be declared a monument so the antiquities authority can prevent alterations to it, or impose conditions upon any proposed alterations.

"It is one of the few surviving European-style mansions in Hong Kong. It will be a great loss if it is pulled down," district councillor Cheng Lai-king said.

hkskyline

January 26th, 2011, 03:35 AM

Hotung Peak villa saved from jaws of developers
The Standard
Wednesday, January 26, 2011

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The Peak villa of late businessman and philanthropist Robert Hotung has been saved from the wrecker's ball after the government invoked executive power to conserve the site.

The owner of Ho Tung Gardens, a granddaughter of Hotung, had applied for the site to be redeveloped into luxury apartments.

Surveyors and other experts believe the 120,000-square-foot lot may be worth HK$3 billion.

But Secretary for Development Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor said Ho Tung Gardens must be saved.

It will be gazetted on Friday to list the structures on the land as a proposed monument and prohibit any development for the next 12 months.

Hotung, born in 1862, died at the age of 94 after being the first non-European to receive permission from the colonial government to live on The Peak. Born to an English father and Chinese mother, he was an influential businessman and philanthropist in the colony.

Ho Tung Gardens, built in 1927 in Chinese Renaissance style, is the only residence directly linked to him.

His son, Robert Ho Shai-lai, lived in it from the 1960s to 1990s. It is now owned by granddaughter Ho Min-kwan.

Lam said yesterday that the government had been negotiating with the landlord over how to preserve the site before contact was broken in the middle of last year. Then the government received an application from the owner to redevelop the site into low-rise luxury residences.

The Buildings Department approved the building plans in December as the application did not violate restrictions.

But it also alerted the bureau, which yesterday decided to propose the site as a monument that will carry Grade 1 historic status.

The Antiquities Advisory Board will decide whether to declare the site a monument within the next 12 months.

Ho Min-kwan had in July last year written to the board to express her disagreement with the idea of Grade 1 historic status for Ho Tung Gardens. She offered reasons including the fact her grandfather had not lived there and that the interiors had undergone considerable alterations.

Robert Ho Hung-ngai, Hotung's grandson, said he respected the government's decision. He added that the site had been owned by Ho Min- kwan - who could not be reached for comment - since 2003.

Lam said the government will explore ways of preserving the site with the owner, including economic incentives. Options include buying back the site or swapping it for another one - as happened in 2008 with King Yin Lei Mansion.

There, the government offered land in exchange for the owner to surrender the 71-year-old building on Stubbs Road.

hkskyline

January 28th, 2011, 06:55 AM

Ho Tung villa highlights lack of heritage strategy
28 January 2011
South China Morning Post

Ho Tung Gardens villa on The Peak has exceptional historical and heritage value. So it is good that the government has stepped in to head off its imminent demolition. But there is a sense of déjà vu about its late reprieve from the wrecker's ball after building approval for redevelopment was granted. This is a reminder that we still lack a coherent policy for preserving heritage.

The Antiquities Advisory Board listed the property as a grade one historic site. This cleared the way for the government to declare it a proposed historic monument and freeze a HK$3 billion redevelopment plan by existing owner Ho Min-kwan, the granddaughter of late tycoon Sir Robert Ho Tung.

It is not as simple as it looks. Many Hong Kong heritage sites are in private hands and the rights of property ownership must be respected. Ho Tung Gardens is a case in point. Officials negotiated in vain with Ho and her representatives for months over an offer of incentives to preserve the heritage and to assist maintenance work. Last month, the Buildings Department, which is not responsible for heritage issues, approved plans for 11 blocks of four-storey houses.

The freeze will last 12 months. Secretary for Development Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor says she will revive talks with the owner. Failing agreement, the government is legally empowered to declare the site a formal monument - and the owner has a right to claim financial loss. Other options include a land swap and a transfer of the plot ratio to another site. Buying the site for public ownership is a last option. This approach mirrors the rescue of the King Yin Lei mansion in Stubbs Road with a site swap after demolition had begun - just one other example of how the lack of a coherent strategy means officials can find themselves having to step in at the last minute to quell a public outcry.

The government deserves credit for improving heritage protection with a more transparent grading system under which all interested parties are consulted. As a result, gradings have been proposed for about 1,500 heritage buildings across the city. But only those listed as grade one are afforded the ultimate protection of being declared a proposed historic monument. Otherwise, the government can only negotiate and the owners can dispose of their buildings as they see fit. Instead of relying on the last-minute government rescues, the city needs a comprehensive strategy for preserving heritage that clarifies the question of how to compensate owners. Perhaps it is time to set up an independent trust with the expertise and resources to implement it. Such a body, which would also have an education function, should aim at becoming at least partly self-funding from property income and public support, including donations from our increasingly philanthropic tycoons.

Ho Tung Gardens - a residence built for his wife by a legendary business and community leader, and a distinctive Hong Kong example of the Chinese renaissance style - is truly exceptional. So was Ho Tung, known to locals as the "grand old man of Hong Kong". The basis of his enormous personal fortune was his start as a comprador - the Chinese-speaking middlemen who acted as agents for British and other foreign merchants and took a percentage cut from both sides. Often they became richer and more powerful than the businessmen they were paid to serve.

Such heritage is part of Hong Kong's unique history as part of China. Future generations should be able to look back on the post-handover years as a time when we safeguarded it for posterity.

hkskyline

January 29th, 2011, 05:49 PM

Ho Tung Gardens declared proposed monument
Friday, January 28, 2011
Government Press Release

The Secretary for Development, Mrs Carrie Lam, in her capacity as the Antiquities Authority, today (January 28) declared Ho Tung Gardens at 75 Peak Road as a proposed monument under the Antiquities and Monuments Ordinance (Chapter 53).

The declaration, which is published in today's Gazette, will be effective for 12 months. During the period, Ho Tung Gardens will be subject to legal protection provided under the Antiquities and Monuments Ordinance. The protection includes the prohibition of any building or other works on the proposed monument, or any actions to demolish, remove, obstruct, deface or interfere with the proposed monument unless a permit is granted by the Antiquities Authority.

A spokesman for the Development Bureau said that the declaration would provide Ho Tung Gardens with legal protection for 12 months and allow more time for the Administration to further discuss options to preserve Ho Tung Gardens with the owner. In the meantime, the Antiquities Authority will consider in a comprehensive manner whether or not Ho Tung Gardens should be declared a monument on a permanent basis under the Antiquities and Monuments Ordinance.

The Development Bureau has explained to the owner of Ho Tung Gardens the legal effect of the declaration. The Antiquities and Monuments Office (AMO) wrote to the owner today to formally notify her of the declaration of proposed monument in accordance with the established procedures.

Ho Tung Gardens has high historic and architectural value. Mr Robert Ho Tung was a prominent community leader in the years following the establishment of Hong Kong as a port, actively participating in and making significant contributions to different spheres of local affairs. He was the first non-European to receive permission from the then Hong Kong Government to reside in the Peak area. Ho Tung Gardens symbolises the rising status of the Chinese community and is the only remaining residence directly related to Mr Robert Ho Tung in Hong Kong. It is also a masterpiece among the few buildings in Chinese Renaissance style in Hong Kong.

The Antiquities Advisory Board confirmed on January 25 the Grade 1 status of Ho Tung Gardens and supported the action of the Government in declaring Ho Tung Gardens as a proposed monument. The Development Bureau is actively continuing the discussion with the owner on preservation options.

hkskyline

February 6th, 2011, 06:39 AM

Gardens a living reminder of our colonial past, say historians
26 January 2011
SCMP

Historians say Ho Tung Gardens is a living reminder of an important chapter in the city's colonial history as Sir Robert Ho Tung was the first non-European to receive permission to live on The Peak.

Antiquities Advisory Board member Joseph Ting Sun-pao said the mansion had to be seen in the context of the anti-imperialist sentiment of the 1920s. "The greatest value of Ho Tung Gardens is that it was an exception to a law that forbade Chinese to live in The Peak."

He said Ho Tung, a Eurasian with good networks with the Chinese, helped mediate a strike that spread in Guangzhou and Hong Kong in 1926. The next year, the then governor Sir Cecil Clementi granted an exemption from the law to let him build the mansion.

"Ho Tung was of Dutch and Chinese ancestry, but he considered himself Chinese and dressed in a completely Chinese fashion," Ting said. "The exemption and the erection of a Chinese-style garden on The Peak carried great significance in that era."

Another board member, Ko Tim-keung, said the Chinese Renaissance style site was of more historical interest than the King Yin Lei mansion in Stubbs Road and Haw Par Mansion in Tai Hang. "Ho Tung Gardens is beyond compare. The other two sites do not have such interesting stories behind them."

Ho Tung, born in 1862, started his career with British-owned trading firm Jardine Matheson. He served on the boards of charities, helped set up the Chinese Club and was its first chairman. He was knighted in 1915 and 1955.

The 120,000 sq ft mansion site, called The Falls because of a stream on the grounds, was built for Ho Tung's second wife Clara. The house had a room for Ho Tung, who stayed a few nights in his wife's last days. The mansion was bombed during the second world war. The swimming pool was used to bury dead soldiers and mules from both the British and the Japanese sides.

The current owner Ho Min-kwan, a granddaughter of Ho Tung, told the government last year that the site was not worth a grade-one historic rating because Ho Tung did not live there for long, no important family events were held there and the building's interior had been considerably altered.

hkskyline

February 14th, 2011, 03:19 PM

Sale threat to juice shop's 63-year sugar cane reign
9 February 2011
South China Morning Post

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A shop in Central that has been selling sugar-cane juice for 63 years is facing closure as the historic building that houses it is to be sold for HK$100 million.

The building will be preserved, but rent for the shop is expected to shoot up once the deal is closed.

The Tsui family, who have been running the shop, fears its days are numbered as they will not be able to afford a steep rent rise.

Tsui Chi-san, who took charge of the family business 20 years ago, helped by his wife and two sons, said: "Recently, estate agents kept coming and asking us about the sale of the building. We have no idea and the landlord won't tell us his plan."

Kung Lee, on the corner of Hollywood Road and Peel Street, has been selling its signature sugar cane juice to white collar workers, residents and tourists since 1948.

The ground-floor shop, as well as the three-storey tenement building, is a landmark in SoHo. But the building owner, named Kenny Kwong Kam-kin according to land records, is expected to close a deal soon to sell it.

The tenement was built in the 1920s and is a grade-two historic building. Eric Ng Yim-ming, assistant sales director of Midland Realty, the agent in charge of the sale, confirmed yesterday a deal was expected.

"Several low-profile, rich families are interested in this antique building. They don't plan to demolish the block but will look for character tenants such as galleries," he said.

"Those buyers didn't say they want to kick out the herbal tea shop, but a rent rise is almost certain."

He said the owner proposed a selling price of HK$100 million. The deal is likely to be completed this month.

The owner raised the monthly rent from HK$40,000 to HK$70,000 last year, said Tsui's wife, who declined to give her name.

"At that time, we almost wanted to give up the business. But our customers told us they would support us even if we raised the price of our juice and tea. That gave us confidence," she said.

The price of a glass of sugar cane juice was raised from HK$7 to HK$9 this week. Tsui's wife said the price should have been increased sooner, but it was done only after the Lunar New Year to follow Chinese tradition.

"It's very tough to meet the rent. We can't survive if the rent is raised further after the building is sold," she said.

With the rent rise, the couple could not afford to recruit workers and now rely on their two sons.

Opening from 11am to 11pm every day, the four take care of all the work - peeling, cutting, washing and steaming the canes.

Over the years, the family added more products to meet changing times and tastes.

On top of sugar cane juice and tea, Tsui's wife devised a recipe to make sugar cane pudding. The shop also brought in tortoise jelly and more varieties of herbal tea.

"Sugar cane is a natural and healthy diet. It's affordable to everyone. I want to keep on in this business. I believe this is also part of the heritage here," she said.

The family has been looking for a shop in Central. The owner of the building next door once indicated his willingness to let them move in at HK$40,000 a month, but later rented the space to a bar.

"I want to make an appeal here. If any shop owner in Central is willing to charge us rent at HK$40,000, please let us know," Mrs Tsui said.

hkskyline

February 19th, 2011, 04:34 PM

Family rift threatens future of egg store
18 February 2011
South China Morning Post

A family dispute may see the closure of a preserved egg store in Sheung Wan known for drawing long queues.

Shun Hing Hoo has for years supplied and sold preserved and salted eggs from its shop in Wing Lok Street. Its previous owner, Kwok Wing-fai, died recently. According to a court filing, he left the business to a son, Kwok Tak-shing.

"The shop was so famous that even television interviewed them, and customers had to queue outside the shop to buy their duck eggs," a nearby shopkeeper said yesterday.

Gold World Investments, owner of the site since 1991, filed a High Court writ this week seeking an order for Shun Hing Hoo to leave. Gold World said it had not been paid licence fees since February 2005.

A Gold World director, Kwok Tak-ming, who said he was a son of Kwok Wing-fai, noted that shops near the store attracted rents of HK$40,000 to HK$50,000 a month.

The filing names Kwok Tak-shing, Kwok Shuk-ching, Shirley Kwok Suk-ling and the estate of Kwok Wing-fai as defendants. Kwok Tak-ming says these three are his siblings.

Kwok Tak-ming said Gold World filed the court claim after a decision by him and his mother, 72. According to an annual return last year, they were Gold World directors along with Kwok Tak-shing and Kwok Wing-fai.

They could not be reached at the shop yesterday.

The shopkeeper from a nearby store said Shun Hing Hoo was closed four to five days before the Lunar New Year and had not opened since.

Another shopkeeper said the store used to be in Wing Sing Street but had to make way for high-rises.

hkskyline

March 10th, 2011, 03:35 PM

New life for blasts from the past
27 February 2011
China Daily - Hong Kong Edition

History buffs often bemoan Hong Kong's lack of foresight for preserving its architectural heritage. In the early 1970s, the gracious red-brick colonial rail station that was the terminus for a network of trains running from the tip of Tsim Sha Tsui all the way through China, Russia, Europe and beyond was reduced to a mere clock tower. More recently, the beloved Star Ferry pier has been replaced with a bypass on reclaimed land. But all is not completely lost. These days, the city is more sensitive to conserving its architectural gems, breathing new life into colonial relics.

One controversial conversion is the former Marine Police Headquarters Compound into 1881 Heritage. The large complex spans Salisbury Road to One Peking Road, and Canton Road to Kowloon Park Drive, and was occupied from 1881 until 1996. In 2003, developer Cheung Kong Holdings won the tender to revitalize the site according to international conservation standards. Six years later, the first tenants moved in.

The original structures consist of the main building, stable blocks, time-ball tower, fire station and fire station accommodation block. As the area is prime tourist territory, the lower parts of the site house a number of luxury boutiques, including Shanghai Tang, Tiffany & Co and Cartier. The upper section is crowned by Hullett House, a boutique hotel operated by Aqua Group that boasts a bevy of restaurants and bars. Although critics scoff at 1881 Heritage as a Disney-fication of a historical site, it has been a hit with tourists. And it is preferable to demolition.

Another approach: Move the building. Originally built in 1846, Murray House's Central site became much too valuable for its purpose as officers' quarters. In 1982, the building was dismantled piece by piece to make way for I.M. Pei's Bank of China building. Each of the more than 3,000 pieces was faithfully catalogued and, in 2002, the building was resurrected in Stanley. Today, the bottom floor houses the Hong Kong Maritime Museum, while its upper floors are al fresco restaurants with broad sea views.

In 2007, Murray House was joined by Blake Pier, also formerly in Central and relocated to Stanley after a 40-year stint as the roof of Morse Park pavilion. A fitting companion to Murray House, Blake Pier offers ferry services to nearby islands.

Built between 1873 and 1875 by French Mission architect Father Pierre-Marie Osouf, Bethanie in the green Pokfulam was originally conceived as a place for priests to recuperate from tropical diseases. Along with two octagonal Dairy Farm cowsheds built in 1886, the government granted Bethanie to the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts in 2003. The entire complex underwent extensive restoration, led by architect Philip Liao. It reopened in 2006 with facilities for its film school and a restored chapel - now it's a hotspot for weddings and events.

Liao is now working on the revitalization of the former Tai O Police Station into a heritage boutique hotel, with an opening planned late this year.

hkskyline

March 24th, 2011, 11:23 AM

King Yin Lei to open for public visits
Government Press Release
Wednesday, March 23, 2011

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Following more than two years of intense on-site and off-site work supervised by Professor Tang Guohua, conservation expert from Guangzhou University's College of Architecture and Urban Planning, the restoration of King Yin Lei, a declared monument, has been completed and members of the public can, for the first time, enter the mansion to appreciate its architectural beauty.

The Commissioner for Heritage's Office of the Development Bureau will organise 10 open days at King Yin Lei falling on weekends from April 2 to 17 and the Easter holidays (April 22 to 25) for the public to visit the building.

A spokesman for the Development Bureau today (March 23) said that following the completion of restoration works, the next challenge is to find a suitable use for King Yin Lei that will meet the objectives of sustainable heritage conservation and public accessibility.

"We will include King Yin Lei in the third batch of historic buildings under the Revitalising Historic Buildings Through Partnership Scheme (Revitalisation Scheme) to identify the most suitable use for the building under the management of a non-profit-making organisation. Details of the third batch of the revitalisation scheme will be announced in June.

"We hope that the open days will help stimulate public views and suggestions on the adaptive re-use of the monument. An opinion card will be distributed during the open days for visitors to let us know their views," the spokesman said.

Admission tickets for visiting King Yin Lei can be collected through the following three channels:

(a) Through online registration at the heritage conservation website of the Development Bureau (www.heritage.gov.hk) from 8am tomorrow (March 24);

(b) Complete the registration form available at the heritage conservation website from 8am tomorrow (March 24). Registration forms should be returned to the Commissioner for Heritage's Office via fax at 3167 2699; or

(c) Admission tickets will also be distributed at the Hong Kong Heritage Discovery Centre (HDC) at Kowloon Park, Haiphong Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon, from March 26 (Saturday) during opening hours. HDC is open from Mondays to Saturdays (except Thursdays) from 10am to 6pm and on Sundays and public holidays from 10am to 7pm. Please visit the Antiquities and Monuments Office's website (www.amo.gov.hk) to learn more about the HDC.

Each open day will have a morning session from 10am to 12.30pm and an afternoon session from 2pm to 4.30pm. Each person can obtain a maximum of four tickets in any one session on a first-come, first-served basis. A total of 20,000 tickets will be distributed to the public.

There are no parking facilities at King Yin Lei. Members of the public are encouraged to use public transport to access the venue.

For enquiries about the open days, please call the Commissioner for Heritage's Office of the Development Bureau at 2848 6213 or 2848 6214.

Originally named "Hei Lo", King Yin Lei was built in 1937 by Mrs Shum Li Po-lun and Mr Shum Yat-chor, a merchant and philanthropist from Guangdong Province. The building combines Chinese and Western architectural influences in a sophisticated manner, demonstrating the superb building technology and craftsmanship available in Hong Kong's pre-war period.

In September 2007, works to remove the roof tiles, stone features and window frames were noticed at King Yin Lei, arousing a public outcry and calls for its preservation. The Government took decisive action by declaring the building a proposed monument and reached an agreement with the owner swiftly for a non-in-situ land exchange, marking a precedent in Hong Kong's protection of privately owned historic buildings under the new heritage conservation policy adopted in 2007. As part of the agreement, the owner consented to fund King Yin Lei's restoration costs.

King Yin Lei was declared a monument in July 2008 and put under permanent statutory protection. Through the assistance of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, Professor Tang Guohua was commissioned to draw up a restoration proposal. Restoration work commenced in September 2008 and was substantially completed by December 2010.

hkskyline

April 2nd, 2011, 07:28 PM

Mansion restoration outstrips expectations
2 April 2011
South China Morning Post

The restoration of King Yin Lei mansion - which opens to the public for the first time today - has exceeded expectations, according to the man in charge of the work.

Guangzhou University Professor Tang Guo-hua said more than 80 per cent of the mansion had been returned to its former glory.

When work began in 2008, with the building minus almost all its roof, floor, ceilings, beams and walkways, Tang promised that 80 per cent of the old building would be restored.

"It [restoration level] is even more than 80 per cent," he said. "These three years of endeavour enabled local craftsmen to re-master the traditional architectural techniques, many of which were almost dying out in Hong Kong. Fortune has come out of misfortune."

Tang's team had to travel to Foshan and Fujian to source materials and craftsmen for the job.

The restoration team had to rely on marks left on site, old photographs and remnants to remake the items. Traditional materials and techniques were used to preserve as much of the mansion's architectural value as possible, Tang said.

"The large-scale renovation work at the King Yin Lei mansion is a landmark case in local heritage conservation," said Laura Aron, Commissioner for Heritage.

All 20,000 tickets have been distributed for tomorrow's public viewing of the Chinese Renaissance-style building in Stubbs Road.

"We are encouraged by public enthusiasm for appreciating the historic site and will consider further arrangements for more open days," Aron said.

Today's visitors will start their tour in the garden and then walk through the three-storey mansion. Details of the materials and techniques used in the restoration process will be illustrated by a short documentary and on exhibition boards.

Each visitor will be given a feedback form to express their opinions on the building's future use.

King Yin Lei was built in 1937 by a merchant, Shum Yat-chor.

Its third owner tried to demolish the mansion for redevelopment in 2007, but halted the work amid public outrage.

Government officials then declared the site a monument and the owner agreed to surrender it in exchange for land nearby.

hkskyline

April 4th, 2011, 05:41 AM

Looking at the big picture of our history
The Standard
Monday, April 04, 2011

Heritage preservation is currently the talk of the town, with the revitalization of numerous characteristic Hong Kong venues such as the old government supplies depot, the Central Police Station and the former police married quarters all vying for attention.

And quite rightly so, given the fact that protecting architecture is much like protecting a treasured layer of fossil within an age-old sedimentary rock.

Like art, buildings and traditions from different periods need to be preserved and conserved. This goes beyond simply being a notion of the historical. In fact, it becomes a social and political element.

Social in terms of how such an act of reconceptualization may activate the surrounding urban realm; political in terms of who determines what exactly should be protected and how - in other words, what is worth the laborious injection of time, thought and money.

It may perhaps be useful to look into a photographic record of the entire city, group all the layers of fossils and analyze from a macro scale what would yield the most significance.

That is, provide a voice for our rich historical legacy while allowing room for future development and turning a new leaf on the city's ever-evolving story.

This is no doubt a very difficult process, one that the Development Bureau and Architectural Services Department fully understand and have a strong grasp on, as the number of challenging projects lined up prove.

What does seem to be emanating from the public is the sense that such projects demand creative solutions, solutions that are sustainable, have a long-standing impact on the community, engage meaningfully with the public, and are in harmony with the surrounding environment.

Hong Kong Art Vanguard Association members - architect Nicholas Ho and art historian Stephanie Poon - don't always see eye to eye.

hkskyline

April 6th, 2011, 11:44 AM

Restored mansion draws a crowd
3 April 2011
South China Morning Post

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King Yin Lei on Stubbs Road has never been so crowded. Upwards of 1,600 people visited the 74-year-old mansion yesterday for its first open day since its restoration.

A queue formed hours before the doors opened at 10am and when they finally did, visitors poured into the Chinese Renaissance building's gardens to begin a tour through time. Staff talked them through the architecture and history of the 1930s mansion, a rare example of an architectural style that blends local design tradition with modern construction techniques. All 20,000 tickets for the 10-day public viewing were snapped up in advance.

Siu Yam-cheung and Wong Sau-kuen arrived at 9.35am to prepare for their tour guide examination in May. "It's a nice new tourist spot for both locals and foreigners," Siu, 52, said. "We need to conserve more historical structures like this, because they represent the unique history of Hong Kong."

Siu enjoyed the main building most, because it showed the luxurious lifestyle of its original owners, while Wong liked the traditional furniture and appliances.

"It will be great to show the younger generation what people used in their houses in the past," Wong said.

A 50-year-old visitor was impressed by the view from the balcony overlooking Happy Valley, Wan Chai and Victoria Harbour. "It was nice walking around and taking photos casually here. There's not much chance to do so," she said.

She is concerned what will become of the mansion. "I hope it won't be as high-ended as The Pawn in Wan Chai," she said, and saw it as a good spot for a coffee shop.

Another visitor, Chan Yuk-chun, 60, said she wanted to see the mansion's architecture. "It's eye-opening to see the magnificence of it. It's great to see it restored, and it would have been a pity if it was demolished."

She especially liked how the ceilings and rugs matched each other.

"It was very well thought-out when they built it, and greatly represented the tastes of the rich," she said. Chan hoped the mansion could be used for educational purposes and open for visitors again.

The mansion, built by merchant Shum Yat-chor, was on the brink of being torn down by its third owner in 2007. The work was stopped amid public outrage, and the mansion declared a monument. The owner agreed to surrender the mansion in exchange for land nearby. Restoration began in 2008.

hkskyline

April 7th, 2011, 12:25 PM

Detective work restores heritage
The Standard
Wednesday, April 06, 2011

King Yin Lei, the 1930s Chinese renaissance mansion on Stubbs Road that was partially demolished before a government rescue in 2007, has been restored. The result is stunning.

We must thank Guangzhou University professor Tang Guohua. He selected samples of glazed roof tiles, mosaic floor, window frames, brick and other parts from the rubble, worked out how everything fitted together and had replicas made in the mainland.

For example, surviving the demolition was one door (from the toilet, presumably, because the wrecking crew were using it), enabling new ones to be copied. As well as enjoying their privacy, the workers were also superstitious and avoided destroying the niche that sheltered the house god's statue, which also helped Tang to recreate one of the main rooms.

Perhaps the finishing touch comes from original furnishings on loan from a previous owner, the Yao family. The presence of the furniture gives the visitor the impression that it is still a living family home.

King Yin Lei is open to the public on holidays and weekends for this month - but all tickets have been distributed. I am hoping that the government will find a way to extend the open period so more people can visit. Officials are already looking for ideas on how to put the grand building to adaptive use.

It is a flagship heritage project for Hong Kong, and a great success.

Bernard Charnwut Chan, chairman of the Antiquities Advisory Board, sees culture from all perspectives.

hkskyline

April 15th, 2011, 09:06 AM

Heritage rules in dire need of an upgrade
4 April 2011
SCMP

The move to allow redevelopment of the historic Chinese-style buildings at 6 and 8 Kennedy Road, Mid-Levels, and not employ the devious declaration of temporary monument status should be welcomed. The last time the administration got it right was when Bruce Lee's former residence was denied monument status because the building had been altered decades ago. Then, the Antiquities and Monuments Office rightly had to disappoint fans, given the baseless heritage claims.

However, most of Hong Kong's heritage policy lacks co-ordination, and the government's approach usually mimics the bad guys in Lee's movies, who take what they want, when they want it.

Ho Tung Gardens was deemed a "proposed historic monument", but its historical "value" was debunked as urban legend. The most embarrassing case involved Jessville mansion, also declared a proposed monument, before being downgraded to a grade-three historical building less than a year later, after owners agreed to maintain the building as a clubhouse. When the monuments office flip-flops in such a way, legitimate doubts arise about heritage and whether efforts to stop redevelopment are justified. Do "heritage" buildings like King Yin Lei mansion or Ho Tung Gardens deserve the status?

King Yin Lei was graded on the same day its monument status was declared. The declaration of monument status to halt redevelopment skews an already incomplete grading process and undermines the office's credibility.

Secretary for Development Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor's description of the heritage policy as to take "no action if the enemy makes no move" diverts responsibility. Just look at the King Yin Lei mansion, which had 20 per cent of its facade ruined. Conservationists and the media pointed fingers at the owners, but they had the right to redevelop. It was the office's responsibility to protect heritage, yet it had not even graded the mansion, indicating it held no heritage value. Had the office established a set of clear guidelines, the building would not have lost its original features.

Such desperate, last-minute efforts are often cheered, but they could, in reality, mean that potential historic buildings are demolished because they aren't on a watch list.

Privately owned sites worthy of heritage status have been in the same state for decades. Thus, there is no reason why, after years of government assessment, those that have not been declared monuments should suddenly be protected. With 70 per cent of identified heritage buildings privately owned, there is a pressing need for an overhaul of the system.

If Hong Kong is increasingly deprived of historic landmarks, the blame should fall on the monuments office, not property owners. It has repeatedly admitted to problems with its policy but no changes have been made. If the public wants to keep its heritage buildings, it must demand that the policy is renovated.

Nicole Alpert is a research associate with The Lion Rock Institute, Hong Kong's leading, free market think tank.

www.lionrockinstitute.org

hkskyline

April 28th, 2011, 06:38 AM

SDEV exchanges views with youth on heritage conservation
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Government Press Release

The following is issued on behalf of the Commission on Youth:

The Secretary for Development, Mrs Carrie Lam, exchanged views on heritage conservation with young people at the Youth Exchange Session organised by the Commission on Youth (COY) at Youth Square today (April 27).

Mrs Lam spoke about various heritage conservation and revitalisation of historic building initiatives in Hong Kong during the exchange session, which was attended by more than a hundred participants.

The Chief Executive announced in the 2007-08 Policy Address that as part of its plans to address public aspirations for a quality living environment, the Government would press ahead with a number of heritage conservation initiatives in the next five years, Mrs Lam said.

The Revitalising Historic Buildings Through Partnership Scheme was launched in 2008. The Scheme, which invites non-profit-making organisations to submit proposals to revitalise historic government buildings, has already helped formulate and conduct revitalisation plans for nine historic buildings. Through economic incentives such as land exchange and the transfer of development rights, the Government has also encouraged private owners to preserve historic buildings. The best example of such incentives is King Yin Lei mansion, which is now holding open days for the public.

Other initiatives include conducting Heritage Impact Assessments for government capital works projects, the Financial Assistance for Maintenance Scheme for privately owned and graded historic buildings, and various education and promotion activities to raise public awareness of heritage conservation.

Mrs Lam said, "Last year, we produced a set of teaching kits to introduce Hong Kong's heritage conservation policies and practices to secondary school students. We wish to encourage young people to think about the significance of heritage conservation from various perspectives, to be aware of and to get in touch with historic buildings, and participate in our heritage conservation works in the future."

The COY's Convenor of the Working Group on International Exchanges and Conferences, Mr Lai Pui-wing, said that the COY would continue to organise exchange sessions and invite government representatives to attend so that young people would have more opportunities to exchange views with them on topics of concern.

Information about heritage conservation in Hong Kong is available at the following website: www.heritage.gov.hk.

hkskyline

May 11th, 2011, 04:39 AM

Central Market fault is habit of playing safe
The Standard
Monday, May 09, 2011

An oasis has been chosen as the design theme for the revitalization scheme of Central Market.

Such a concept will bring a sharp contrast to the surrounding skyline, populated by high-rise, high-density buildings that create a canyon effect of trapping pollutants and heat in the streets below.

As such, a low-level, almost park-like facility, in the middle of Central will be a welcome change.

The government has made a sound decision in opting to save this complex and preserve its unique architectural design out of respect for its rich heritage.

Pivotal to the design brief is that the original structure be retained as much as possible, while making it viable for public use and utilizing its potential to the maximum.

There is, however, a fine line between concept and execution.

While the former allows for creativity, any such inspired thought is restricted in the latter.

But in refusing to restrict itself to going with one winner and in keeping itself open to mixing and matching elements from the four design proposals, the government has made the notion of any competition seem almost redundant.

It is perhaps this lapse in strategy that has caused the four short-listed entries to look fairly similar.

All have kept the original facade intact, complementing the 1930s Bauhaus architecture with a playful patination of colored windows.

Most of the design teams have kept the original sky well and planned an additional pavilion on the rooftop.

It is unfortunate that these architects have chosen to interpret the brief in a conventional way, and part of the fault may be due to the restrictive nature of the brief.

But, having said that, there is always room for creativity and one can only assume the proposals reflect the tendency of Hong Kong designers to play it safe.

Abroad, heritage preservation projects can be seen everywhere - Tate Modern, Saatchi Gallery and Neues Museum, where outstanding design has made a significant contribution to regenerating the identity of cities.

Here, however, not enough consideration has been paid to why a building was built, the context of its current existence and the new era in which the design should resonate.

We need vision to achieve. What our city needs is the guts to experiment and to visualize things that capture the core meaning of existence.

Only then will we do justice to the rich and varied history of Asia's most exciting city.

What we need is courage, change and creativity.

Hong Kong Art Vanguard Association members - architect Nicholas Ho and art historian Stephanie Poon - don't always see eye to eye.

hkskyline

May 12th, 2011, 11:12 AM

Chief Executive visits Central Market
Government Press Release
Thursday, May 5, 2011

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The Chief Executive, Mr Donald Tsang, today (May 5) visited Central Market to be updated on its revitalisation and the on-going public consultation of the four design concepts.

Accompanied by the Chairman of the Urban Renewal Authority (URA), Mr Barry Cheung, the Chief Executive visited the "Central Oasis" design concept roving exhibition at the Oasis Gallery on the second floor. He was briefed on the four design concepts, which are themed "Urban Cocoon", "Central Gateway", "UFO (Urban Floating Oasis) and the New Marketplace" and "A Living Heritage". The four concepts are based on mainstream public views as well as on studies of the structural conditions of the building and its main architectural features. The conceptual designs serve to facilitate public understanding of the different feasible design concepts and to encourage feedback.

Launched last month, the territory-wide roving exhibition moved back to Central Market on May 3 and will remain there until this Friday. The URA will take into account public preferences as well as other practical considerations in formulating the final design guidelines for tendering the architectural design work for the project.

Mr Tsang went inside the market building and was briefed on its structural conditions and special architectural features.

"I have been living in Central for many years and have many fond memories of Central Market. As a child, I always went with my mother to shop here. Later on, I came here with my wife and made friends with many stall owners. The market was a very convenient, friendly and vibrant place," Mr Tsang said.

In his 2009-10 Policy Address, the Chief Executive announced that Central Market would be conserved and revitalised. The revitalisation plan will help improve the air ventilation in the neighbourhood and provide leisure space rarely found in this busy area for white collar workers, residents and tourists.

"The Central District is home to our financial sector. Here, the demand for prime office space is keen. Yet we still need to strike a fine balance between development and the revitalisation and conservation of buildings with historic significance and architectural interest," Mr Tsang said.

"I believe that with a broad-based public participation in the design process, Central Market will become a popular hangout spot in the future."

He urged the public to give their views on the design concepts to take the project forward.

The Central Oasis Community Advisory Committee will soon discuss the views of the public on the four conceptual designs and the mode of operation of the future Central Oasis. In the months ahead, the URA plans to proceed with the tender exercise for the architectural design. It hopes to invite Expressions of Interest by the end of this year. The first phase of the revitalised market building should be completed in 2015 with full commissioning in 2018.

Central Market underwent a number of partial demolition and alteration works throughout its nearly 80-year history. The current form of the building is the result of the fourth generation modification works. The building has not been used since 2003.

carrieso

August 3rd, 2011, 12:19 AM

We must to preserved our historical architecture

hkskyline

August 7th, 2011, 07:42 PM

Mallory Street, Wanchai
7/23

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hkskyline

August 28th, 2011, 06:12 PM

Cheap rent belies heritage move
The Standard
Thursday, June 30, 2011

The Asia Society Hong Kong Center has reached a new milestone in moving from its headquarters at Baskerville House on Duddell Street to a historic complex - the site of the former explosives magazine on Justice Drive in Admiralty.

The complex comprises four buildings constructed by the British military between the 1850s and the 1910s for the production and storage of explosives and munitions.

It was later used as a government storage facility and workshop before being abandoned in the 1990s, then declared a historic building, and leased to the society for 21 years at a nominal rent.

The conceptual design for the rehabilitation of the building was developed by award-winning architects Tod Williams Billie Tsien & Associates following a worldwide competition.

Ivan Ho Chi-ching, an expert in conservation, is project consultant.

The site is being turned into a showcase of cultural education that blends conservation with modern design to preserve the historic value and layout of the original structures.

Open to community use, it is set to become an attraction for local and overseas visitors. Related construction and refurbishing work are continuing, with completion scheduled for after the Lunar New Year.

New additions include a reception hall and connecting pedestrian walkways, with lecture theaters, exhibition and performing venues, as well as catering facilities.

The society's staff team, comprising more than 10 members, is moving into the new center even as th
e renovations are ongoing.

The rehabilitation project cost HK$200 million, with the Hong Kong Jockey Club contributing HK$125 million.

Clearly, despite the low rent, it is not at all cheap to take over this kind of historic site. Siu Sai-wo is chief editor of Sing Tao Daily

timo9

August 31st, 2011, 02:29 AM

hkskyline

October 11th, 2011, 09:22 AM

Ho Tung villa awaits monumental verdict
The Standard
Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Ho Tung Gardens - The Peak villa of late businessman and philanthropist Robert Hotung - has moved a step closer to being declared a monument, after two government consultancy reports said it has high historical and architectural value.

The reports, from experts at the University of Hong Kong, have been submitted to the Antiquity Advisory Board.

The villa, built in 1927, comprises a Chinese Renaissance-style mansion and extensive gardens.

The reports say Ho Tung Gardens represents one of the oldest surviving examples of Chinese Renaissance architecture in the territory and is even older than many similar mainland buildings.

The many important visitors who stayed at the 84-year-old mansion include former US president George HW Bush, when he was chief of the US liaison office in the mainland.

It was also used as a military operations base to fight the Japanese in 1941.

During the early colonial days, The Peak was reserved for Europeans. Hotung, who was Eurasian, broke that tradition. The property is now owned by the late tycoon's granddaughter, Ho Min-kwan, who wants to demolish the mansion to build residential blocks.

The government declared the site a proposed monument in January last year to halt any redevelopment moves and buy time for negotiations with Ho.

The granddaughter earlier agreed to keep the mansion and build 10 three- or four-story residential blocks in the garden, covering a residential floor area of 6,000 square meters.

Antiquities Advisory Board chairman Bernard Charnwut Chan yesterday said the Development Bureau is doing its best to negotiate with Ho, but he does not know what progress has been made.

In the worst-case scenario, Chan said, the government may have to pay Ho to preserve the site, as it cannot turn it into a statutory monument without the consent of the owner.

hkskyline

October 29th, 2011, 06:18 AM

Monumental court fight looms on Ho Tung Gardens
The Standard
Tuesday, October 25, 2011

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The government is bracing for legal action by the owner of Ho Tung Gardens on the Peak in wake of approval by the Antiquities Advisory Board for a plan to declare the 84-year-old villa a monument.

Secretary for Development Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor said that among the options facing the owner are seeking a judicial review of the decision to declare the gardens a monument, accepting the government's offer of a site exchange and, in the event that the exchange is deemed unsatisfactory, seeking compensation in the courts.

But she warned that nobody would know how the courts would rule on the compensation quantum.

The owner, Ho Min-kwan, is the granddaughter of late businessman and philanthropist Robert Ho Tung, the first Eurasian to live on the Peak when he built the villa at 75 Peak Road. She wants to demolish it to build 10 residential blocks.

Lam said both sides met six times, with the owner present on five of the occasions.

She said the government's land swap proposal would give the owner almost exactly the same development potential - a plot ratio of 0.5 and about 10 villas of no more than four floors per building.

But the first signs are not encouraging.

"The owner, based on some architectural appraisal given to her by advisers, said that our exchange option is not desirable because of various restrictions and limits, and also because of the procedures to do in terms of rezoning," Lam said.

She said King Yin Lei was exactly in the same situation when the government rezoned a green- belt site to do a land swap with the owner.

Ho Tung Gardens is the only remaining residence directly related to Robert Ho Tung, the first non-European allowed to reside on the Peak.

Ho Tung Gardens, probably the earliest surviving example of Chinese Renaissance architecture, was built in 1927 on a 124,000-square-feet site.

hkskyline

November 8th, 2011, 06:36 AM

SDEV speaks on Ho Tung Gardens
Monday, October 24, 2011
Government Press Release

Following is the transcript of remarks (English portion) by the Secretary for Development, Mrs Carrie Lam, at a media session today (October 24) on the declaration of Ho Tung Gardens as monument:

Reporter: Can you elaborate a bit about the land exchange proposal? Can you explain why your views differ from the owner? Why do you think it is a feasible plan? Why do you think it is workable?

Secretary for Development: Since I proposed the proposed monument status for Ho Tung Gardens, I have been in a continuous discussion with the owner of Ho Tung Gardens with a view to reaching what I hope to see as a win-win solution. On the one hand, we can preserve this extremely valuable and significant heritage for Hong Kong, and on the other hand respect the owner's private property rights. So, in around May this year, we presented to her what I called a land exchange proposal. Basically, it is by amalgamating two adjacent "Green Belt" sites with part of the Ho Tung Gardens' site which is of less heritage value - the tennis court and the carport - so as to form a big enough site to exchange with her existing site that would give her almost exactly the same development potential - a plot ratio of 0.5 and about 10 villas of no more than four storeys per building. But unfortunately the owner, based on some architectural appraisal given to her by her advisers, said that our land exchange option was not desirable because of various restrictions and limits and also because of the procedures to do in terms of rezoning. As you know, we cannot build on a Green Belt site, we have to rezone the site into Residential before we could offer it as a land exchange. But as a result we have then given her our views again, suggesting that having consulted various concerned departments, we felt that her concerns and limitations by and large could be overcome. And more importantly, we quoted the example of King Yin Lei, which was in exactly the same situation, where we have to rezone a Green Belt site in order to do a land swap with the owner. So I hope that we could continue to explore with the owner on this basis.

hkskyline

November 10th, 2011, 03:51 PM

LCQ5: Heritage conservation policy
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Government Press Release

Following is a question by the Hon Tanya Chan and a reply by the Secretary for Development, Mrs Carrie Lam, in the Legislative Council today (November 9):

Question:

Since April 2003, four historic buildings have been declared as proposed monuments, and two of them have already been declared as statutory monuments. The latest building declared as a proposed monument is the Ho Tung Gardens on The Peak. The Government recently intends to declare the Ho Tung Gardens as a statutory monument and is negotiating with the owner of the Ho Tung Gardens on the compensation package. As the issue has given rise to public debate over the conservation policy on monuments and historic buildings, will the Government inform this Council:

(a) given that different compensation proposals were made by the authorities in handling the compensation for the three proposed monuments, namely the Morrison Building, King Yin Lei and Ho Tung Gardens, of the criteria based on which the authorities formulated the compensation proposals, and how the authorities have formulated the compensation proposal for the owner of the Ho Tung Gardens according to these criteria;

(b) given that at present the authorities handle the compensation arrangement for the declaration of private properties as proposed monuments on a case-by-case basis, whether they will consider developing a specific mechanism and consistent standards for making compensation to owners of statutory monuments, as well as formulating principles and procedures for adopting which form of compensation (e.g. land swap and transfer of plot ratio, etc.), so as to avoid society forming the impression that the current compensation arrangements lack consistent standards and transparency; if they will, of the details; if not, the reasons for that; and

(c) as the existing legislation provides statutory protection for proposed and statutory monuments only, without giving the same protection to the graded historic buildings confirmed by the Antiquities Advisory Board, whether the authorities will consider conducting a comprehensive review of the conservation system for proposed and statutory monuments as well as graded historic buildings, and introduce legislation to preserve graded historic buildings; if they will, of the details of such review; if not, the reasons for that?

Reply:

President,

Under the new heritage conservation policy announced by the Chief Executive in October 2007, the Administration recognises that on the premise of respecting private property rights, we need to offer appropriate economic incentives to encourage or in exchange for private owners to conserve historic buildings in their ownership. From October 2007 till now, we have, including the preservation-cum-development proposal of the China Light & Power which was approved by the Metro Planning Committee of the Town Planning Board last week, successfully secured owners' agreement to conserve historic buildings under five projects through the provision of economic incentives. They comprise a monument (King Yin Lei), a Grade one building (the clock tower of the China Light & Power Administration Building), two Grade three buildings (Jessville at 128 Pokfulam Road and the front portion of the shophouse at 179 Prince Edward Road West) and a group of four Grade one or Grade two buildings of the Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui.

My reply to the three parts of the question is set out below -

(a) As evident from the successful cases in the past few years, the policy of providing economic incentives for conserving privately owned historic buildings is not confined to proposed monuments. Generally speaking, a historic building may be declared as a proposed monument in view of a demolition threat. The Antiquities Authority, having consulted the Antiquities Advisory Board, may consider it necessary to declare the building as a proposed monument to provide a buffer period of 12 months for ascertaining the heritage value of the building and exploring the possibility of conservation with the owner. In fact, we welcome it even more if owners of historic buildings proactively contact us, at any time, to explore proposals which can balance conservation and development at any time. While the provision of economic incentives serves a compensatory function to a certain extent, it is not the established compensation arrangement for resumption of private land or property by the Administration. In formulating the appropriate economic incentives, factors to be taken into account generally include the heritage value of the historic building concerned, the development potential and value of the site where the building is located, the space provided by the site from the planning perspective, the wish of the owner, the land and financial implications on the Administration, as well as the anticipated public reaction. It is indeed because of the need to consider a multitude of factors, and that the cases involved are few in number but very diverse in nature, it is considered appropriate to formulate feasible proposals according to the circumstances of individual cases.

Regarding the case of Ho Tung Gardens, having considered its significant heritage value and the value of the site at the Peak on which the Gardens is located, as well as the fact that the owner has obtained approval for her plans to demolish and redevelop the Gardens, we consider it necessary to offer a site which allows the owner to pursue development as an economic incentive. The owner has once expressed interest in the provision of economic incentives by the Administration or the land exchange proposal as in the case of King Yin Lei. We have therefore explored the technical feasibility, and offered the owner with a feasible land exchange proposal in May this year in order to preserve the most important parts of Ho Tung Gardens. According to the land exchange proposal, we will apply the original development parameters of Ho Tung Gardens (including the site area, plot ratio and building height) to the new site, after land exchange, as a reasonable economic incentive. So far, we have not yet reached an agreement with the owner.

(b) As mentioned above, the type and extent of economic incentives are determined on a case-by-case basis, and seek to strike a balance between respect for private property rights and heritage conservation. Since each historic building is unique and the demand and wish of each private owner are not the same, adopting a standardised proposal will not be conducive to the formulation of the most appropriate economic incentive in exchange for the conservation of the historic building concerned by the owner.

When applying the policy of providing economic incentives, we will present the proposal to the public and adhere to required statutory procedures. For example, in the case of King Yin Lei, we presented the land exchange proposal to the public at the very first instance and followed the established town planning procedures to rezone the newly granted site used for land exchange from Green Belt to residential use. This set of procedures include making public the rezoning application by the Town Planning Board when received and allowing the public to express their views within a certain period of time. Those who have made submissions may also make presentation in person at the Town Planning Board meetings. In the case of Ho Tung Gardens, I also presented to the public the economic incentive proposal offered to the owner when I announced the intention to declare Ho Tung Gardens as a monument. I consider the existing mechanism reasonable and appropriate.

(c) While the mechanism for providing compensation to the owner by the Antiquities Authority as stipulated under section 8 of the Antiquities and Monuments Ordinance (the Ordinance) is only applicable to those historic buildings which have been declared as proposed monuments or monuments under the Ordinance, economic incentives may be made available to those graded historic buildings which are not under statutory protection. Moreover, through the new heritage conservation policy formulated in 2007 and the work in recent years, we have appropriate measures in place to protect and conserve all categories of historic buildings. These measures include conducting heritage impact assessment for all new capital works projects, completing the heritage assessment of the 1 444 buildings systematically, setting up an internal monitoring mechanism under which the Commissioner for Heritage's Office and the Antiquities and Monuments Office will be alerted to take action when possible threats to historic buildings are known, as well as regarding Grade one buildings as highly valuable historic buildings for consideration by the Antiquities Authority as to whether they may have reached the "high threshold" of monuments to be accorded with statutory protection when necessary.

The above-mentioned measures have already provided effective protection to historic buildings in Hong Kong, and struck a balance between respect for private property rights and heritage conservation. We will continue to monitor the implementation of this new heritage conservation policy and do not have plan currently to conduct another comprehensive review.

hkskyline

November 23rd, 2011, 09:09 AM

LCQ9: Ho Tung Gardens
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Government Press Release

Following is a question by the Hon Abraham Shek and a written reply by the Secretary for Development, Mrs Carrie Lam, in the Legislative Council today (November 23):

Question:

It has been reported that following the Government's formal declaration of Ho Tung Gardens as a monument on October 24 this year, and due to the fact that an agreement of a proposed land exchange between the Government and its owner has not been reached so far, it is estimated that an amount of $3 billion of taxpayers' money (in terms of Ho Tung Gardens' redevelopment value) might prospectively be incurred to compensate its owner in respect of the financial loss suffered or likely to be suffered by her. In this connection, will the Government inform this Council:

(a) of the number of private properties that were declared monuments under the Antiquities and Monuments Ordinance (Cap. 53) (the Ordinance) in the past three years, together with the details of the compensation or land exchange arrangements made in each case; whether it has made reference to any overseas example in which similar compensation was made for monument preservation when it considered Ho Tung Gardens' case; if it had, of the details; if not, the reasons for that;

(b) given that Article 105 of the Basic Law stipulates that "the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region shall, in accordance with law, protect the right of individuals and legal persons to the acquisition, use, disposal and inheritance of property and their right to compensation for lawful deprivation of their property", whether it has assessed if the declaration of any private property as a monument without having obtained the owner's consent would be in contravention with the Basic Law; if it has assessed that this would not, of the reasons for that, and whether it has considered establishing an appeal mechanism under the Ordinance to form an independent jury to review the decision made by the Government; if it has, of the details; if not, the reasons for that; and

(c) whether it has assessed if there might be the possibility of judicial review applications to challenge decisions of the Government with regard to the declaration of private properties as monuments on the ground of the stipulation under Article 105 of the Basic Law; if so, whether it has put in place any measure to minimise such possibility, including but not limited to legislative amendment; if it has, of the details; if not, the reasons for that?

Reply:

President,

First of all, I would like to point out that I, in my capacity as the Antiquities Authority, simply consulted the Antiquities Advisory Board on the suggestion of declaring Ho Tung Gardens as a monument according to section 3(1) of the Antiquities and Monuments Ordinance (the Ordinance) on October 24, 2011. Such suggestion still needs to go through the existing statutory procedures before Ho Tung Gardens will be declared as a monument. Besides, we have never conducted an assessment on the financial loss that may be suffered by the owner of Ho Tung Gardens. The so-called "an amount of $3 billion of taxpayers' money might prospectively be incurred" is just an estimate floating in the community.

My reply to the three parts of the question is set out below:

(a) Since 2008, a total of seven private properties have been declared as monuments. They are Maryknoll Convent School, King Yin Lei, Residence of Ip Ting-sz, Yan Tun Kong Study Hall at Ping Shan of Yuen Long, Tung Wah Museum, Man Mo Temple on Hollywood Road and Tang Kwong U Ancestral Hall at Kam Tin of Yuen Long. Apart from the land exchange in the case of King Yin Lei as economic incentive provided by the Government to the owner for preserving the historic building, no compensation or land exchange arrangements were involved in the other six cases.

The land exchange for King Ying Lei was conducted in accordance with the Government's heritage conservation policy established in September 2007 on the provision of economic incentives to encourage or in exchange for private owners to conserve historic buildings in their ownership. No public money was involved. We are discussing possible preservation options with the owner of Ho Tung Gardens in accordance with the same set of policy and with utmost sincerity. In formulating the heritage conservation policy mentioned above, we have made reference to overseas experience, and the conclusion was that heritage authorities seldom spend large public sums in exchange for the title of or right to use privately-owned historic buildings, and are seldom involved in cash compensation. Of course, we have also given due considerations to the circumstances of Hong Kong, and that the price which the public in general are willing to pay for heritage conservation. In applying the "economic incentives" policy, we have to take into account a multitude of factors, and that the nature of each case is different.

(b) The Ordinance will not take away the owner's title to the property which has been declared as a monument. The Ordinance also does not substantially interfere with the concerned owner's property rights or take away or restrict the concerned owner's right to alienate the property. Therefore, the current practice of declaring private properties as monuments does not constitute "deprivation" of the property of individuals and legal persons under Article 105 of the Basic Law, and thus does not involve a right to claim compensation under Article 105 of the Basic Law. Besides, the Ordinance has already struck a fair balance between the protection of individual's property rights and public interest. Based on the above reasons, the current mechanism of declaring privately-owned historic buildings as monuments does not contravene the Basic Law.

As mentioned above, at present, the Antiquities Authority has to consult the Antiquities Advisory Board on her intention to declare any place, building, site or structure as monuments, and the concerned owner or lawful occupier can raise objection to the intended monument declaration in accordance with the existing statutory procedures. According to section 4 of the Ordinance, if a place, building, site or structure intended by the Antiquities Authority to be declared a monument is situated on private land, the Antiquities Authority shall, prior to the making of the declaration, serve on the owner and any lawful occupier of the private land a notice in writing of her intention to declare a monument therein. Within one month, or such longer period as may be allowed by the Chief Executive in any particular case, after the service of the notice, the owner or lawful occupier may object by petition to the Chief Executive to the intended declaration. The Chief Executive, upon considering an objection made, may direct that (i) the intended declaration shall not be made or (ii) the objection be referred to the Chief Executive in Council. If the objection is referred to the Chief Executive in Council, the Chief Executive in Council may direct that (i) the intended declaration be made by the Antiquities Authority; (ii) the intended declaration be so made, subject to such variations or conditions as he thinks fit; or (iii) the intended declaration shall not be made. The decision of the Chief Executive in Council to declare a place, building, site or structure as a monument is amenable to judicial review.

We consider that the mechanism mentioned above is appropriate. Therefore, we have no plan to form an independent jury to review the Government's decisions on monument declaration.

(c) The current practice of declaring private properties as monuments does not contravene the Basic Law. Nevertheless, in formulating the heritage conservation policy, we have sought to strike a fair balance between respecting private property rights and heritage conservation, including adopting the highly flexibly practice of "economic incentives" to encourage or in exchange for private owners to conserve historic buildings in their ownership. In the past few years, we have effectively conserved many historic buildings with this initiative. We strongly believe that these successful examples have reduced by a large extent the number of legal actions which may be taken by owners to challenge the Administration's decisions.

hkskyline

November 25th, 2011, 01:03 PM

Green for go on $500m Central Market plan
The Standard
Friday, November 25, 2011

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Central Market is to be turned into a "Central Oasis" for the man-in-the- street at a cost of HK$500 million.

The Urban Renewal Authority said it has selected AGC Design to undertake the transformation with more green space and trees on the rooftop. If the structure is strong enough, a swimming pool may be built, it added.

The design will be finalized in six months and the plan will then be submitted to the Town Planning Board for approval next year.

AGC Design director Vincent Ng Wing-shun said it is clear Hongkongers do not want the market turned into another upscale shopping mall.

He said the historic site will be down- to-earth without chain stores and other high-end boutiques.

"Our vision is to conserve Central Market in the best possible manner, and we will try our best to make it architecturally creative," he said.

Parts of the building such as the light well, glass windows and stone steps will be retained, he added.

The firm's design will have traditional food stalls - a dai pai dong - and an organic produce market on the ground floor.

The middle floor will comprise an art gallery and rooms for performances while a swimming pool will likely be built on the top floor. Organic food will be planted on the roof top.

Ng said the structure of the old building has to be strengthened to accommodate the greenery on the rooftop. This will be one of the challenges.

He described the building - completed in 1938 - as "an elderly in need of more body checks." The URA and AGC Design will pick up good features from the other three firms that submitted tenders for the final design.

"AGC will start working on the proposal based on the design concept and which reflects the aspirations of the community," URA managing director Quinn Law Yee-kwan said.

"Our current schedule is to submit a planning application with the Town Planning Board for consideration next year. We plan to exhibit AGC's final design for the public to view in due course."

Law expects the final cost of the project to exceed the original budget of HK$500 million, because of inflation and rising construction and material costs.

Central Market ceased operating in 2003.

hkskyline

November 28th, 2011, 07:07 AM

Hotung rammed home staying power
The Standard
Wednesday, November 23, 2011

In an earlier column, I looked at Ho Tung Gardens on The Peak as an important heritage site.

The 1927 building is one of the earliest examples of Chinese Renaissance architecture - the mixed Chinese and Western style adopted by China's first Western-trained architects.

However, the complex is also important for its social history, as a recent booklet by Lee Ho-yin, Lynne DiStefano and Curry CK Tse makes clear.

At the time it was built, The Peak was off-limits to Chinese residency, and there was a law against Chinese-style tenement buildings being built in the Mid-Levels or higher - rules partly driven by fear of bubonic plague.

Robert Hotung was the richest man in Hong Kong but of mixed ancestry, a status that both whites and Chinese looked down upon. But he and his family did buy property in the area, and managed to live there.

The choice of a very Chinese-looking style of architecture for the new house in 1927 wasn't an accident. It was a statement that a racial barrier was being broken. It was also a declaration by Hotung that he was different from his neighbors, who were only living in the colony temporarily before going home.

Hong Kong was the only home he had, and he emphasized this point by investing quite a lot in property - which was uncommon at the time.

So Ho Tung Gardens tells a very important historical story. Bernard Charnwut Chan, chairman of the Antiquities Advisory Board, sees culture from all perspectives.

hkskyline

December 11th, 2011, 07:49 AM

Fighting for war reminders
The Standard
Friday, December 09, 2011

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There's more to Hong Kong's heritage than traditional Chinese buildings and colonial architecture - there's the military aspect.

And it is worth preserving, according to Hong Kong University researchers.

The Faculty of Architecture carried out a 10-year study from 2000 on defense structures dating from World War II, including gun batteries, pillboxes, gun emplacements and tunnels built by British and Japanese troops.

The team located about 120 military installations, including 77 pillboxes or defensive bunkers built along the Gin Drinker's Line in Kwai Chung.

The researchers said a systematic and comprehensive conservation of these military relics is necessary because of their historical and conservational value.

Assistant professor Lee Ho-yin said many of the sites are deteriorating.

"It's still not too late at all. Once we start conserving them for public enjoyment, you will find that they make good materials for sightseeing places or education tools," Lee said.

He described the sites as being a "collective memory" of the wartime defense of Hong Kong.

The older generation might not want to conserve them because of painful memories but they should be preserved for educational purposes.

Lee admitted that there are difficulties in conserving them. For instance, many are located in remote areas and some are overgrown.

"War buildings and structures are designed for war, not for aesthetics."

The researchers hope their findings will provide conservation information for government surveyors and town planners.

However tourism sector legislator Paul Tse Wai-chun is skeptical about the value of such sites for visitors, but agrees they should be protected for their historical value.

hkskyline

December 12th, 2011, 09:14 AM

HK and Asian economies strive for safeguarding intangible cultural heritage
Saturday, October 8, 2011
Government Press Release

Cultural ministers and senior officials of 11 Asian countries have come together in Hong Kong this morning (October 8) to share their insights and experiences of translating the vision of supporting the continuation and enhancement of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) into actions.

Today's "Panel Discussion by Asia Cultural Ministers" Session, hosted by the Home Affairs Bureau (HAB), is the highlight of the "Asia Cultural Co-operation Forum (ACCF) 2011".

The ACCF was launched in 2003 as one of HAB's key initiatives to foster regional cultural co-operation, share good practices and promote culture and the arts.

This year's ACCF is the seventh forum that Hong Kong has hosted. It carries the theme of "Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage: From Vision to Action".

Cultural ministers and senior officials of the Mainland China, Cambodia, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Laos, Myanmar, The Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam have joined today's panel discussion session.

Addressing the panel discussion session, the Secretary for Home Affairs, Mr Tsang Tak-sing, said that Hong Kong was highly committed to promoting regional cultural co-operation and exchange in Asia.

"While the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage adopted by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) provides a framework, how this is translated into practice is a huge subject that has been tackled in different and creative ways by different governments depending on the local context, needs and wishes of the population."

"Here in Hong Kong, we adopt a multi-pronged approach to protect, nurture and promote ICH. This includes in-depth research, education, promotion, application for inscription and transmission," Mr Tsang explained.

He noted that apart from financial and human resources provided by the Government, local communities and organisations were encouraged to participate and support safeguarding measures as part of our concerted efforts to preserve local ICH.

"We are also carrying out a major survey of ICH in Hong Kong to identify local elements in accordance with the framework set out in the Convention for the Safeguarding of the ICH."

"We expect the survey will help identify more heritage items from local communities, groups and individuals," Mr Tsang said, adding that the survey findings would also provide a comprehensive basis for formulating further supporting measures for the preservation, promotion and enhancement of ICH.

In Hong Kong, four local ICH items, namely the Cheung Chau Jiao Festival, the Tai O dragon boat water parade, the Tai Hang fire dragon dance and the Yu Lan Ghost Festival of the Hong Kong Chiu Chow Community, have been successfully inscribed onto the third national list of intangible cultural heritage this year. Another heritage item, Cantonese opera, was inscribed onto UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2009.

The Minister of Culture of the People's Republic of China, Dr Cai Wu, has also addressed today's panel discussion session. Other cultural ministers and senior officials attending the session have taken turns to speak on the theme and joined together to exchange views with the audience in a Q&A session.

hkskyline

December 14th, 2011, 10:11 AM

Appearances aren't everything
The Standard
Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Some of the most controversial conservation proposals involve modern public sector buildings designed to serve practical purposes.

After all, there are lots of them around, and some people even say they are ugly.

As we saw with the Central Star Ferry pier and the nearby extremely basic Queen's Pier, conservation is not about appearances - it is about collective memory and social and historic context.

But some experts believe such structures do indeed have architectural value.

This is discussed in a recently published booklet by Chinese University's Vito Bertin, Gu Daqing and Woo Pui-leng called The Greatest Form Has No Shape (the title comes from the Taoist Laozi).

The booklet looks at three sites in Central: Central Market, Hollywood Road police married quarters and the Central Government Offices West Wing. The first two are being preserved, while the third is the subject of ongoing controversy.

The authors say the three buildings are outstanding for their design qualities, which are not just functional but often clever. For example, the police quarters had high ceilings, which may have compensated for the units' small size. The kitchens and balconies were across the common corridor from the actual flats, overlooking the courtyard.

This arrangement must have added not just to the space, but to the sense of community among the police families who lived there from 1951 to 2000.

In short, modern sites can have architectural as well as social value. Bernard Charnwut Chan, chairman of the Antiquities Advisory Board, sees culture from all perspectives.

hkskyline

December 19th, 2011, 06:46 AM

Just leave my home alone
The Standard
Monday, December 19, 2011

The granddaughter of the man who was the first of Hong Kong's great tycoons is appealing for people to help her fight off a plan to make her 1920s-era mansion home and landscaped garden on The Peak a monument.

Ho Min-kwan says a scheme to preserve Ho Tung Gardens at a cost of billions of taxpayer dollars makes no sense.

Better, she says, that she be allowed to demolish the 84-year-old sprawling mansion and replace it with 10 townhouses - she would live in one - that would occupy about half of the 120,000-square-foot site off Peak Road that overlooks Aberdeen Country Park.

The landscaped garden with a pavilion, pagoda and other features would be preserved along with its greenery, added Ho as she went public for the first time yesterday with her side of the big house story.

That included her pointing out that taxpayers will be stuck with a bill of HK$7 billion in compensation and other work if it is declared a monument.

"I will continue to live there, and I want to improve the site by building smaller houses on one section of the site," countered Ho, who is in her seventies.

"Only the main building will be replaced with more tasteful structures that will blend in with the landscape."

Ho Tung Gardens was shaped by the second but "equal" wife of Robert Ho Tung Bosman, who became famous as Sir Robert Hotung at the head of a clan that has spread and prospered since he created the family empire.

He never lived there, but some historians argue that Ho Tung Gardens is important as it stands as the first house a non-European was allowed to build on The Peak.

Other experts agree with Ho Min- kwan that the mansion is simply an uninteresting pile with a few Chinese features tagged on. They say it cannot compare with a few other "Chinese Renaissance" homes in Hong Kong such as King Yin Lei and Haw Par Mansion.That is the line that Ho pushed, saying the people of Hong Kong "should not be obliged to pay damages by way of compensation, and they will not have to unless the government declares Ho Tung Gardens a monument."

She said the existing main building is "unexceptional" and has been converted into six apartments. Her personal wish is to retain the site as her home and preserve the family legacy.

"I hope when the public knows all the facts it will agree with me that it would be a great mistake to declare Ho Tung Gardens a monument," she said.

Her plea followed Secretary for Development Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet- ngor revealing on Saturday that the government will declare Ho Tung Gardens a protected monument before a 12-month temporary declaration expires next month. That was imposed after Ho first announced her redevelopment plan.

But Ho responded that it is simply not worth the money to make it a monument and against her wishes. "It does not have the requisite historical or architectural value or authenticity; it is not a rare example of an architectural style, and it is not a distinctive building structure.

"It does not arouse public sentiment in the same manner as other historical landmarks, such as King Yin Lei or the Queen's Pier, do or did."

Ho said the site cannot be said to be part of Hong Kong's social memory because "it is barely visible to the public and relatively unknown."

And she is not interested in a land swap. "While I do not doubt the government's good intention, I feel they have misunderstood my situation," she said.

"Unlike other cases where a land exchange has been successfully used to trade for private property, I have no desire to trade Ho Tung Gardens for a piece of land as if it is a business deal. To me, Ho Tung Gardens is my home."

hkskyline

December 20th, 2011, 09:40 AM

Salute the heroes who defended us
The Standard
Tuesday, December 20, 2011

December 25, 1941, is forever remembered in Hong Kong as "Black Christmas" - the day the then-crown colony surrendered to the invading Imperial Japanese Army after a gallant defense lasting 17 days.

What followed was three years and eight months of humility, cruelty, bitterness and horror at the hands of the Japanese. But heroism, sacrifice, courage, camaraderie and love were offered by the Hong Kong people, in contrast to all evils done to them during those dark times.

Last Thursday marked the official opening of St Stephen's College Heritage Trail, located within the environs of the school in Stanley. The school walls enclose a mini history of Hong Kong, from its early colonial days to the present.

The walls also tell a story of what happened there during the bitter fighting in 1941. They stand almost like a guardian to the entrance to both Stanley Prison and Stanley Fort, which was a key defensive position as well as a military base during colonial times.

Canadians, British and our own Hong Kong soldiers were among the many brave men and women who fought and died for liberty, and a way of life they loved.

The trail gives a very detailed account of the college and its illustrious past and present achievements, but also highlights what life was like inside one of Hong Kong's few boarding schools. I was involved in the trail's development because of my friend and its benefactor, Gilbert Hung, himself a "Stephenite" (a term coined to identify a student of St Stephen's College).

The idea was born of the school's council, comprising old boys intent on letting the world know about their alma mater, as well as the significant role the buildings played in our history.

After a lot of hard work getting designs, builders and renovators, historic documents and materials - as well as donors - there was also the planning to ensure the trail could finance and manage itself well into the future.

Overcoming all difficulties, the council completed the job, and together with the donors, went on a matinee viewing on December 5.

Attending as a guest, I was very impressed with not only the proceedings, but also the tasteful design, quality of the displays and value of the information available.

For me, the special bonus was when several Canadian veterans in the defense of Stanley arrived accompanied by their relatives. They wore their medals and their unit insignias with pride - as veterans do during our own Remembrance Day ceremonies - and spoke of their time in 1941 in Hong Kong. They are proud that they and their fallen comrades are still remembered.

Seeing them reminded me of the last line of Ralph McTell's song, The Streets of London: "For one more forgotten hero, and a world that doesn't care."

But in our case, we do care! Very much so. Thank you, Stephenites, for your efforts to "keep memories alive." JS Lam served with Hong Kong police - `Asia's Finest' - for 32 years, reaching the rank of senior superintendent before retiring in 1996.

Web : http://www.ssc.edu.hk/ssctrail/eng/trail.html

hkskyline

January 16th, 2012, 03:18 AM

It's flat crazy
The Standard
Monday, January 16, 2012

The owner of a Peak mansion and garden that is about to be declared a monument against her wishes has opened her doors as she fights against what she says will see billions of taxpayer dollars wasted.

Ho Min-kwan, a granddaughter of Hong Kong's first great tycoon, describes the villa at Ho Tung Gardens as nothing more than a collection of six glorified flats and not worthy to be seen as a historic building.

Speaking to a Sing Tao reporter just days before the government plans to take over Ho Tung Gardens, Ho - who is in her 70s - said it may now be famous because of the big plan but people have little knowledge about interior of the building constructed in the 1920s by one of the wives of her grandfather, Sir Robert Hotung.

And a tour of the mansion shows it is neither luxurious nor grand as many have imagined.

The villa with its flaking and fading paint is very simple, and the six apartments do not appear to have been maintained. The government levies separate rates on the six units.

The villa on the Peak does indeed look like just another old building.

Still, Secretary for Development Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor has announced that the government will declare the entire Ho Tung Gardens a monument at the end of this month.

Ho has estimated that the total takeover package will cost taxpayers close to HK$7 billion.

Also in the 120,000 square-foot spread at 75 Peak Road - also known as Hiu Kok Yuen - that was completed in 1927 are pavilions, ponds, bridges and fruit trees, but all are showing wear. A white Buddha statue stands in the middle of a pond which, due to the lack of maintenance, is cluttered with debris and leaves.

One of the pavilions carries calligraphy of Zeng Guofan, a Chinese official from the Han Dynasty, and Zuo Zongtang, a military leader in the late Qing Dynasty.

But the paint has flaked, and Ho Min-kwan believes the works may not have been original.

The villa, however, is the main point of contention, for Ho wants to demolish it and replace it with townhouses - she would live in one - while retaining the garden features.

The villa, in fact, appear little different from an old farmhouse. There is no fine furniture to be seen, and there is no special decoration besides an old fireplace.

Ho said one of the units in the 4,000-sq-ft building was rented out before but was now vacant. In some other units, kitchen and bathroom fittings have been removed because of water leakage. Stains on the floor attest to that.

Ho said she had shelved renovation and renting-out plans as redevelopment plans took shape, though she had continued to live in one of the villa's flats.

While she didn't show the reporter around that flat, it looked quite ordinary from the outside.

Ho Tung Gardens were used by the military during World War II and suffered accordingly, Ho says, though her grandfather never actually lived there.

Ho said she finds is strange indeed that some people believe Ho Tung Gardens have historical value and are worth conserving.

hkskyline

January 26th, 2012, 09:42 AM

Cash comes flooding in
The Standard
Thursday, January 12, 2012

Queen's Pier may be gone but it's clearly not forgotten.

Activists Chu Hoi-dick and Ho Loy, who fought a losing court battle over the pier in 2008, needed to find almost HK$300,000 to pay costs. So an internet fund-raising campaign was launched.

It generated so much support the pair were able to raise the cash in just two weeks. A total of 286 deposits, remittances and checks ranging from HK$10 to HK$10,000 were received. The pair - who faced a bill of HK$299,931.90 - closed the account on Monday after reaching their target.

The Central pier was dismantled to make way for reclamation after the activists lost a judicial review to save it.

An extra HK$9,775.50 donated before the account was formally closed will be given to Civil Human Rights Front.

It is also one less worry for Chu, who celebrated the birth of his daughter last month.

hkskyline

February 7th, 2012, 04:56 PM

From mansion to animal house
The Standard
Wednesday, January 18, 2012

As controversy rages over the conservation of historic Ho Tung Gardens, I was invited by owner Ho Min-kwan to have afternoon tea at the mansion.

It was a rare opportunity to get an inside glimpse of the property, and I was surprised to find that its empty rooms and disused fireplace contrast starkly with its grand facade.

I remember seeing this beautiful house from a distance whenever I visited The Peak as a child, and I always wondered who lived there. Many years have passed, and the house has lost much of its grandeur.

I also didn't realize the property had been sub- leased, with Ho occupying one unit.

The Chinese Renaissance-style mansion was built by and named after her grandfather, Sir Robert Hotung, a distinguished community leader in early 20th century Hong Kong. He didn't live there, but at another mansion on Seymour Road.

Meanwhile, Ho Tung Gardens was severely damaged during the Japanese invasion and was renovated after the war. Sprawling over a 120,000-square-foot lot with an elaborate garden - complete with bridges over a brook - maintenance of the property is quite a task.

Ho, now in her 70s, said the tenants have long since moved, and her plan now is to redevelop the property into an estate with 10 detached houses. She intends to live in one after their completion, as the mansion has always been her home.

Without diligent upkeep, a grand mansion loses its luster, which is as sad to see as beauty fading from a person due to aging. Witnessing
such a sorry state of affairs with your own eyes, it's easy to understand why heirs to old properties think of redevelopment.

As the hostess was seeing the visitors out, I noticed a small house on the slope outside the front door, and I asked her what it was for.

She said it is now storage space, as it lacks water and power.

But back in the old days it was the "Donkey House," where the family kept their pet.

That revelation quickly prompted someone to joke that rich people really do live worlds apart from common folk - if even pets get their own detached house to frolic in.

Siu Sai-wo is chief editor of Sing Tao Daily

hkskyline

February 17th, 2012, 08:34 PM

Center of attention
The Standard
Friday, February 10, 2012

A HK$385 million facelift has transformed a 19th-century British former military explosives magazine compound into a new Asian hub for cultural exchanges.

The Asia Society Hong Kong Center had its grand opening yesterday with Chief Executive Donald Tsang, his predecessor Tung Chee-hwa and Hong Kong Jockey Club chairman Brian Stevenson as officiating guests.

"This center will contribute significantly to Hong Kong as a world city, a business center and a cultural hub," Asia Society Hong Kong chairman Ronnie Chan Chi-chung said.

The center, on Justice Drive in Admiralty, combines new construction with four former military buildings.

It will hold exhibitions from around Asia, the first being Transforming Minds: Buddhism in Art. It will also host educational programs to celebrate the diversity of Hong Kong as a unique place where East and West meet.

hkskyline

February 24th, 2012, 07:43 AM

Public challenge for experts
The Standard
Friday, February 24, 2012

The final decision of the government on historic Ho Tung Gardens, recently proposed as a statutory monument to protect it from redevelopment, is still pending.

The privately owned property is located at a premium site on The Peak, and its conservation has triggered an important public debate as it may involve the use of substantial public resources.

In the end, the decision on whether to conserve the property must be made by experts, and not be guided by public passion.

To this end the government has enlisted the help of Lee Ho-yin, a scholar at the University of Hong Kong, who classified the architecture of the mansion as being Chinese Renaissance and proposed its preservation.

However, as Lee is a member of the Antiquities Advisory Board, some people are questioning the propriety of engaging his services.

To his credit Lee is an active heritage conservationist. The recently restored Asia Society Hong Kong Center greatly benefited from his advice, and he is now a tour guide of the old British military building.

However, in conservation circles, Lee is known as a fearless critic.

He was highly critical when faux historic architectural-style additions were made to heritage buildings, and he slammed them as "fake antiques."

He also challenged proposals to preserve old structures that have dubious architectural value.

In the past, when a project ran into objections, the government would engage outside experts, as their opinions were considered
impartial and authoritative.

Now a better-educated public may counter expert opinions with their own and put up procedural challenges. At times government experts will find themselves embroiled in such controversies.

Clearly, it is not easy being a government expert these days, as it also involves facing the public.

Siu Sai-wo is chief editor of Sing Tao Daily

hkskyline

March 12th, 2012, 06:10 PM

Deadlock over Ho Tung mansion
The Standard
Thursday, March 08, 2012

Talks with the government over the future of Ho Tung Gardens have stalled after both sides failed to reach a consensus, the owner of The Peak landmark claims.

Ho Min-kwan, granddaughter of late businessman Robert Ho Tung, said yesterday she is not optimistic after authorities rejected her recommendations for the demolition of the main building, a mansion, on the site.

"Negotiations have already halted. There have been many rounds of negotiations already and I can only sit and wait for their final response," Ho said.

"I hope the chief executive can reach a decision soon."

Ho added that, for the time being, she will halt her appeal for the mansion to be demolished.

Secretary for Development Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor confirmed that negotiations have stalled, while adding that new compensation terms have been offered, but refusing to say how much taxpayers' money will be involved.

Ho Tung Gardens is at the center of a heated public debate on whether conservation of historic sites justifies the use of substantial public resources.

The 120,000-square-foot site at 75 Peak Road was built in 1927 and comes complete with pavilions, ponds, bridges and fruit trees.

The mansion is the main point of contention, as Ho intends to demolish it and build 10 townhouses in its place, while retaining the garden features.

But the government recently announced that it will declare the entire Ho Tung Gardens site a monument as it is probably the earliest surviving example of Chinese Renaissance architecture.

Ho estimates that the total takeover package will cost taxpayers close to HK$7 billion.

She had earlier ruled out accepting a government offer of a site exchange that would give her almost exactly the same development potential of a plot ratio of 0.5 and about 10 villas of no more than four floors per building.

The designated deadline for authorities to decide whether or not to gazette the mansion as a national monument has long passed.

Lam told legislators that she is not optimistic about negotiations to conserve the property.

"I spent the past 13 to 14 months trying to find a way in which we can avoid entering legal proceedings, and also to avoid using public money, but I'm afraid that the situation is not working out well," Lam said.

She added the administration will not proceed with declaring the building a permanent monument just yet due to the owner's objections.

hkskyline

March 20th, 2012, 06:58 PM

Clock's ticking on Ho Tung tussle
The Standard
Thursday, March 08, 2012

More than a month has passed since the one-year protection order for Ho Tung Gardens expired. Still, the future of the Peak mansion remains shrouded in suspense.

Owner Ho Min-kwan, the granddaughter of late tycoon Robert Ho Tung, said negotiations with the government have stopped, and she sees no point in any further talks.

What did the landlady want most? An answer from Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen.

Development minister Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor insists the ball is now in the Executive Council's court, after she recommended preservation of the property as a statutory monument.

Obviously, Exco's foot-dragging on her recommendation is symbolic of what the top policy-making body thinks about the proposal. The property owner's appeal for a quick answer is understandable. Wouldn't any normal person lose patience?

In theory, Ho can press ahead with her redevelopment plans after the expiry of the temporary protection order. But a person close to her said she isn't the kind of person to play tough. On the contrary, she wants to be gentle and respect the government.

I fear that on an individual level, if the drama is allowed to drag out unduly long, it can build to become a matter of injustice for Ho, who legitimately expects her private property rights to be ensured. There's a wider concern too. How would other property owners view their interests if the government is seen to be handling Ho's rights unjustly?

The status quo - neither vetoing or accepting Lam's recommendation - may be the best possible scenario for the government. That would certainly be the case if the owner isn't speaking up. But now that Ho has voiced her desire for an early answer, the clock has started ticking, and people are watching.

It really isn't such a complicated issue despite calls by conservationists to preserve the mansion.

I've said repeatedly that the enthusiasm over Ho Tung Gardens' so-called collective memory and historical value are confined to a small social circle.

What society fears most is the potential cost taxpayers may end up paying in the event the mansion is declared a statutory monument against the owner's will.

As said, every time Ho Tung Gardens was discussed, it's often dominated by concerns the public might have to fork out an amount large enough to redevelop Queen Mary Hospital - something in the vicinity of HK$7 billion.

Certainly, there are only a few months left in the current government's mandate. Despite repeated assurances from Tsang that his administration will continue to make policy decisions until the last minute, it's evident that major initiatives are being put on hold.

It would be pitiful if the current government can't see fit to end the suspense and ensure justice for the legal owner.

hkskyline

April 28th, 2012, 07:50 AM

Lui Seng Chun Reopens
http://scm.hkbu.edu.hk/lsc/en/index.html

Lui Seng Chun is an old Chinese shophouse (tong lau) originally owned by Mr. Lui Leung, a renowned businessman who moved to Hong Kong from Taishan county in Guangdong province. Designed and built by architect W.H. Bourne, the building was completed in 1931 with a total gross floor area of 600 square metres. Typical of all tong laus at the time, the ground floor of the four-storey building was used as shops while the upper floors were used as dwellings.

Since the 1960s, the Lui family began to move out of the building as the family continued to grow in size. The building became vacant in the 1970s. In 2000, the Antiquities Advisory Board designated Lui Seng Chun a Grade I historic building. With the vision of preserving the building and to contribute to society, the Lui family decided to donate the building to the Government in the same year.

The Lui Seng Chun building was included in Batch I of the "Revitalising Historic Buildings Through Partnership Scheme" initiated by the Government in 2008 and, after a bidding process, Hong Kong Baptist University was selected to conserve the building and convert it into a Chinese medicine healthcare centre. The revitalisation work was completed in early 2012 and the clinic, Hong Kong Baptist University School of Chinese Medicine – Lui Seng Chun, commenced operations in April 2012.

In terms of heritage conservation, every effort was made to retain the original architectural features as far as possible. Necessary alterations and addition works were carried out in compliance with modern buildings and fire regulations as well as meeting the operational needs of the clinic. In the process, the University adhered to the basic principle of minimising the impact of the alterations while ensuring that all alterations could be reversed if necessary.

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