Plans to rejuvenate Tin Shui Wai shelved in favour of new services for the elderly
Plans to establish a factory outlet and a food market in Tin Shui Wai to ease high unemployment in the area have been shelved because the site's five-year lease was considered too short.
Instead, the land on Wetland Park Road will be used to provide medical care and train service staff for a HK$3.6 billion resort-style seniors' residential project next door, due to be completed in 2014.
The decision means proposals to rejuvenate Tin Shui Wai - known as 'the city of sadness' for a series of family tragedies in the area in the past decade - have been shelved, two years after they were invited.
'Of the five organisations that submitted proposals, most think there are no good business opportunities, because the five-year lease was too short and the investment too big,' Secretary for Development Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor said.
In 2008, the government invited businesses and NGOs to make short-term use of the 30,000-square-metre site - which in the long run is zoned for mixed use, including private residential development - to create job opportunities in the new town.
The exercise drew five proposals, including a dai pai dong featuring the city's top restaurants and a factory outlet.
'Some of the organisations hoped the government would provide the capital, which we found unacceptable,' she said.
Food guru Chua Lam, who proposed the dai pai dong, said it was a 'pity' that the site was no longer available for new ideas.
Chua said the government had stepped back from his initial request for HK$50 million in capital to build basic infrastructure.
'But we didn't insist on a subsidy. I thought a dai pai dong would be attractive to foreign tourists and would provide a chance for the ethnic minorities in the new town to showcase their home cuisine,' Chua said.
The minister said the site would be used for a temporary vocational training centre and a wellness centre to cater for a future retirees' residential project next door, which was launched yesterday.
'We hope to provide a quality living environment for the elderly and bring spending and job opportunities to Tin Shui Wai,' Yeung Ka-sing, chairman of the Housing Society, which will develop the project, said.
The project will supply 1,000 rental flats ranging from 500 to 1,100 square feet and will come with a clubhouse, hotel, restaurant, shops and recreational facilities including lawn bowls, swimming pool and tennis court. A wellness centre will provide housekeeping, day care and medical services for residents.
The first phase of the project will be completed by 2014. It will be fully developed by 2018.
Wong Kwok-hing, a lawmaker representing the western New Territories and chairman of the Legco housing affairs panel, said he believed the project would attract middle-class retirees because there was strong demand for Housing Society flats for the elderly.
University of Hong Kong social work professor Law Chi-kwong said the project could create job opportunities. 'Facilities for the aged need a lot of staff. Suppose they serve 200 elderly residents, at least 150 staff are needed. Tin Shui Wai boasts very nice scenery, which would certainly attract retirees to settle there.'
But Chan Pui-yi, general manager of the Hong Kong Christian Service, which runs community programmes aimed at Tin Shui Wai residents, doubted whether the new facility would draw enough affluent retirees from other areas.
'Yuen Long is a very young community. Only 5.9 per cent of people are over 65, while the average proportion of elderly people in the whole of Hong Kong is 12.4 per cent. If the services at the complex are not cheap, retirees from other districts might not want to go there.
'The lack of hospitals in Tin Shui Wai is another problem ... Why build an outpatient clinic for the elderly in a district that does not boast even one hospital,' Chan said.
