Residents reject 'Wedding City', partial preservation of market

A representative group of residents rejected the government's idea of partly preserving the Wan Chai Market and changing 'Wedding Card Street' into a themed 'Wedding City'.

Wan Chai District Council commissioned a group in 2005 to collect opinions from stall owners and residents, with 2,000 opinions collected from the open forums, focus group meeting and interviews.

District council chairwoman Ada Wong Ying-kay criticised the government's recently unveiled blueprint for Wan Chai development as an incomplete plan that had separate projects for Lee Tung Street (Wedding Card Street), the Wan Chai Market and the 80-year-old Blue House.

But she appreciated the plan for the Blue House, one of the last surviving balconied tenements, where residents will be allowed to move back in after renovations.

Ms Wong had reservations about plans for the Wan Chai Market to be developed into a 46-storey residential building and Lee Tung Street becoming a commercial Wedding City.

One of the group's members, Roy Tam Hoi-pong, also said the high-rise building proposed for the Bauhaus-style market was unsuitable.

'Now the proposal is just a partial preservation of the Wan Chai Market,' said Mr Tam, president of environmental group Green Sense. 'But Wan Chai Market is a special building that should be wholly preserved.'