Energizing Kowloon East

 Energizing Kowloon East 

Presentation by EKEO Officer

16 July, assembled at the Flyover No.1 outside of the Energizing Kowloon East Office (EKEO), a welcome orientation by Professor Barry Wilson and Kumi, we had a quick start on the 1^st day site visits. How excited I am at this fresh new exploration journey with Kowloon. Wishing I could find something new within this old district in HK. I have been hearing of the CBD2 concept, Kai Tak Development and Kowloon East Redevelopment in HK for many times from classes, public medias and industry journals and reports. But frankly, this is my 1^st time that I touch base with these schemes in “real world”.

The Kowloon East consists of the old Kai Tak airport, Kwun Tong and the Kowloon Bay Business Area. As instructed by EKEO officer in his presentation, Kowloon East used to be a critical industrial base at the Golden Times of the HK’ s manufacture industry. However, after the Airport was moved to Chek Lap Kok, the area lost its vitality with a lot of under rented industrial towers left. On the other side, with the prosperity of HK’s financial service industry, a vast array of MNCs would like to establish their regional headquarters in HK, but the office space in traditional CBDs areas like Central cannot meet their occupation demand. 

Nevertheless, some forward-looking developers found it a good opportunity for their expansion

in this area and built around 1.4 million sq.m of offices within Kowloon East. The 12^th Five-Year Plan also underpins HK to be an international asset management and offshore RMB business center. The influence of HK is more significant than ever before. Therefore, to stabilize HK’s postilion and underpin its long-term development, the supply of quality office is quite critical.

In the policy address of recent years, the HK’s Chief Executive initiated the transformation of Industrial Kowloon East to an attractive commercial center, the CBD2 concept. This was also followed by a series of the implementations including the land use review, urban design, improved connectivity and the associated infrastructure.

Implementations

To solve the problems above, the HK government had initiated a line of detailed measures[1]:

• Reclassification of Industrial Land in Kwun Tong and Kowloon Bay into Commercial use in 2001, which industrial buildings can be rebuilt to offices.
• Revitalization of Industrial Buildings in April 2014. These industrial towers can be rebuilt or redeveloped into offices, retails, service industries and hotels.
• In the 320 hectare of land of the Kai Tak development, approx. 1.06 mil sq.m can be developed into offices; 0.8mil sq.m can be planned as retail and hotel use; There will be 32,200public and private residential units, international cruise terminal, sports and tourism facilities.
• Building a Kai Tak Government Office and are planning to relocate other government office buildings to Kai Tak.

We can see that from the detailed initiatives above, with the extra 168 hectare of land in Kwun Tong and Kowloon Bay, Kowloon East has great potential to be the 2^nd CBD of HK. However, from my understanding of the Kowloon East industrial area and the observations during our visits along its main streets and witness of the various industrial buildings there,  there may still be some challenges going forward:

• Though we could see the industrial towers there are old and dirty along the streets and seems that they need to be redeveloped in urgent, it is not easy as there are lots of existing tenants occupied in these buildings and they may not surrender to move out, as they already got accustomed in these offices.
• I also learned that the industrial towers are mostly strata-titled, which will be a great obstacle when scheduling the redevelopment in an efficient manner.
• In broad context, Kowloon East is still in shortage of green facilities, rest space and pedestrian linking & environment in Kwun Tong and Kowloon Bay and was poorly organized at the moment.

Kai Tak Cruise Terminal

Kai Tak Cruise Terminal

Our next stop is the Kai Tak Cruise Terminal. It is a part of the “Kai Tak Development[3]” and situated at the original Kai Tak Airport. The Kai Tai Development is a series of government initiatives since 1998 after the original airport’s relocation to Chek Lap Kok. The original location of Kai Tak Airport was thus vacant but left for a good opportunity for redevelopment. The plan consists of building public rental housing, international cruise terminals, cross-sea bridges, Kwun Tong Paramounts, seawater district cooling system and supporting infrastructure etc.

The comprehensive “Kai Tak Development” is as below (Click link):

http://www.hab.gov.hk/file_manager/en/documents/policy_responsibilities/Recreation_Sport_and_Entertainment_Licensing/mpsc_03.pdf

In the “Kai Tak Development[4]”, the government plans the international cruise terminals as:

• Two Berths accommodating two largest vessels in the world, with displacement of 110,000 tones
• Estimated cost: HK$8.2 Billion
• Terminal Building and first berth to be commissioned in mid-2013
• Second berth will be commissioned in 2014

Viewing Platform of Terminal

During our visits in the terminal, there are very limited vessel arrivals along the berth. It seems that it could be very challenging to pay back the initial cost at the current pace. Perhaps that’s why it is quite difficult in financing for the whole projects and few investors showed their interests. Further back to the whole Kai Tak development, there was already delays in delivery for both the cruise terminal part and other parts. Therefore, the economic pressures still determine the whole development and construction processThere is also seascape accessibility problem: even standing on the so-called viewing platform of the cruise terminal, we could only see a “small picture” of seascape under the arch and most of the beautiful scenes of the Kowloon Peninsula and Victoria Harbor were covered by the strange object. The design of this viewing platform seems not considerable.

New Cross-sea Bridge under Construction

There is also a new bridge joining the end of cruise terminal and Kwun Tong being built, which is a controversial issue, as under the Protection of the Harbor Ordinance[5], the reclamation can only take place under the consent of “Overriding public need”; Last but not least, the future traffic flow is yet to be seen, which may add further “economic pressure” for the development.

References:

[1] Energizing Kowloon East Website (http://www.ekeo.gov.hk/en/home/index.html)

[2] Kowloon East Conceptual Master Plan (http://www.megabox.com. hk/index.php?lang=eng)

[3] Kai Tak Development (http://www.ktd.gov.hk/eng/index.html)

[4] EKEO: Kai Tak Development (http://www.ekeo.gov.hk/en/key_projects/index.html)

[5] Protection of the Harbor Ordinance (http://www.legislation.gov.hk/blis_pdf.nsf/6799165D2FEE3FA94825755E0033E532/A6F680241E02ADBD482575EF00152C69?OpenDocument&bt=0)