Developers seeking to build a private columbarium at a secluded site near South Lantau will this week press ahead with their quest for approval from the Town Planning Board despite objections from villagers, green groups and a nearby youth hostel.
New Cheer, which owns around 70 per cent of the site near the beach at Mong Tung Wan, already has the powerful Heung Yee Kuk's support for a project that has previously been rejected. On Friday, it will present a revised proposal to the board.
The 5,850-square-metre site is currently zoned as a green belt along the fringes of the Lantau South Country Park and is accessible only by boat from Cheung Chau or a one-hour hike from Pui O.
New Cheer will ask the board to rezone it as a site for a columbarium so that it can accommodate 11 buildings with niches and a hall for funeral services. It is also asking the government to grant land that will account for 27 per cent of the area, in exchange for which it will surrender 30,000 of the 66,000 niches to the government to meet public demand.
'[The green belt zoning] is too restricted, unfair, unreasonable, impracticable and inadequate to meet the soaring high community demand [for urn niches],' says the company's statement to the board.
The company is refiling its application after failing to win support last year from the Development Opportunities Office, which provides a one-stop co-ordination service for projects considered socially worthwhile. The office then said the project, which originally proposed holding 96,000 niches, involved complex land and transport problems.
New Cheer's latest application comes with a letter of support from the kuk, an organisation which looks after the interests of indigenous New Territories residents.