Making West Kowloon Cultural District profitable should not just mean more hotels and malls

The troubled history of the arts hub notwithstanding, its efforts to make itself financially viable by ‘thinking out of the box’ should be supported – but not if it means diluting its stated purpose of promoting arts and culture

Alice Wu

Published: 8:15am, 28 Aug 2023

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The making of the West Kowloon Cultural District has spanned decades and, every step of the way, it came up against political headwinds and controversies.

It was in 1998 that the city’s first chief executive formally proposed to build a “state of the art” performance venue in Kowloon. A design competition was launched in 2001 and the winner announced the following year.

Soon after, questions were raised about the winning design, the financial model, the lack of public consultation and other issues, and in 2005 the government was forced to go back to the drawing board.

While it’s common for developments of this scale to attract criticism – the Eiffel Tower was once scorned by Parisians as an eyesore – the early opposition against the cultural district was also partly due to bad timing.

In 2005, Hong Kong was just recovering from the impact of the severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak and the political fallout of the mass demonstrations against proposed national security legislation.

More to the point, Hongkongers were deeply suspicious of government decisions that were made without consultation or transparency, whether perceived or real. Many people were outraged by the decision in 1999 to award the Cyberport project to Pacific Century Group without formal open tender. Thus, the scene was set for an arduous path for the West Kowloon Cultural District.

The view from the Roof Garden of M+ Museum at the West Kowloon Cultural District, as seen through a sculpture, on July 10. Photo: Sam Tsang

Starting over, the government set up consultative committees and held public consultations. The West Kowloon Cultural District Authority was set up in 2008 and a design was picked in a new contest in 2011, but problems continued to dog the project.

The art hub’s first chief lasted less than two weeks on the job. None of the chief executives so far have made it over six years, and one lasted just five months.

Now, not even a year since the opening of the Hong Kong Palace Museum – a lightning rod for controversy as soon as it was announced – we’re told the arts hub is financially hobbling on one foot. The situation is so dire that Henry Tang Ying-yen, chair of the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority, warned that any further budget cuts would be like “lifeblood flowing out like a stream”.

It is not the first time financial troubles have surfaced at West Kowloon. In 2017, to help boost the hub’s income, the government approved an “enhanced financial arrangement” that allowed the authority to set up income-sharing arrangements with private developers for commercial and residential projects. The hope was that it could be a steady source of recurrent income for the hub.

Well, the pandemic changed everything. The cash won’t be coming in quickly enough. West Kowloon is set to run out of money by March 2025, yet its chairman said it would not ask for more government funding. Instead, it has submitted new financing plans.

Tang said the arts hub had to “think out of the box” and use its land to generate enough revenue, and warned that it might need to shift away from plans to fund cultural activities by setting up hotels, and residential and commercial spaces.

Henry Tang, chairman of the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority, speaks at the opening ceremony of an exhibition at the Hong Kong Palace Museum, on April 11. Photo: Handout

While we appreciate the recognition for the need to “think out of the box”, the arts hub cannot lose its original purpose of giving Hong Kong a home for the arts to nurture the city’s growth as a cultural powerhouse.

The art scene has been thriving in Hong Kong, with auction houses reporting record sales despite the pandemic.

Perhaps the West Kowloon hub can be a home for the private art museums that have flourished globally and on the mainland. There are art collectors who could use the space to display their art. Not only would that make art more accessible, sharing the art can be lucrative – putting private collections on show could give the pieces more opportunities to gain in value.

Would the government consider letting private institutions in and encourage such moves with support in the form of tax breaks or collaboration offers? What about an art school perhaps?

Instead of thinking within the same models that may perhaps be out of step with the times, maybe we need to think more along these lines and not be too quick to reject calls for privatisation. This, in essence, is what thinking outside the box requires.

Alice Wu is a political consultant and a former associate director of the Asia Pacific Media Network at UCLA