Mind the Gap | The Lok Ma Chau Loop is the Cyberport fiasco all over again
‘Lok Mau Chau is simply too far away and irrelevant for anyone living in or outside to visit or work in’
When the Hong Kong government announces another technology park, it is time to break out in a sceptical and apoplectic fit. The Hong Kong and Shenzhen governments intend to jointly develop an innovation and technology park at Lok Ma Chau Loop.
The 87 hectare “Hong Kong-Shenzhen Innovation and Technology Park”, with a site area four times of the existing Hong Kong Science Park, is supposed to be the largest innovation and technology platform ever set up in Hong Kong. You can always depend on a property driven response from the government to anything that has nothing to do with property.
Entrepreneurs struggling to prove their abiding faith in their visions only need a garage and a cluster of believers like the Home Brew Computer Club or their apartment like Jack Ma of Alibaba
Check the internet and you’ll find plenty of shared office spaces in Hong Kong for entrepreneurs. And resourceful entrepreneurs can more find collaborators on social media than in tech parks. Lok Mau Chau is simply too far away and irrelevant for anyone living in or outside to visit or work in.
The project recalls harrowing flashbacks of when the 26 hectare development of another misguided technology park, Cyberport, was announced in 1999. It upset the big property developers so much that Walter Kwok Ping-sheung, one of the family owners and a director of Sun Hung Kai Properties immediately requested a meeting with Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa to demand an explanation of why a formal open tender was bypassed in favour of Pacific Century Group.
Financial Secretary Donald Tsang Yam-kuen uttered a lame explanation of needing to act quickly to ensure Hong Kong didn’t miss the world’s emerging technologies.
But, the only need it filled was an excuse for a luxury property development.