It has been more than a decade since a former slaughterhouse in To Kwa Wan was transformed into an artists' village, but with attention shifting to another Kowloon arts hub, tenants at the Cattle Depot Artist Village feel neglected and forgotten.
One of the long-standing tenants at the Cattle Depot wants the government to inject at least HK$12 million to revive the site.
'We have fallen into a bad trap,' said Choi Yan-chi, vice-chairwoman and co-founder of contemporary art gallery 1a Space. 'Here is a place where everything is ready for arts and culture, but somehow we have been forgotten and neglected in a very strange way.'
Nevertheless, the tenants remain committed, says Choi, with a current show at 1a Space already drawing about 1,400 visitors since it opened in mid-February.
Choi also criticised the government for failing to develop a specific plan for the site, which has been managed by the Development Bureau since April last year. She fears the government may be withholding any action because the site is prime real estate for developers, with transport links to the area in the pipeline.
In 2000, HK$23 million was spent on renovating the single-storey brick structures of the slaughterhouse, originally built in 1908. A year later, tenants from the Oil Street artists' village in North Point moved to the site. They renamed it the Cattle Depot Artist Village, and heralded it as the start of a new chapter in the city's cultural development.
