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SCMP Reporter

MARINA Cove was once on the verge of declaring independence from Hong Kong, instituting border controls and hiring Gurkhas to prevent marauders pillaging the luxury compound after a string of break-ins.

  But for the retailers and restaurateurs of the commercial complex attached to the Cove, all has not been well for some time.

   The barbarians, it seems are not at the gate but guarding it, and they are there in force.

  We were alerted by a letter to the editor from Post readers who had been disgusted by the conditions of toilets at the complex.

  They weren't the only ones. The owners and managers of shops and restaurants were none too happy about the performance of Yang Yick management.

  One manager pays $29,000 a month in rent. He also pays a $2,400 a month to the management firm.

  For this not insubstantial sum, he gets the grass cut around the complex and very little else. He complains that the management does nothing by way of promoting the complex: signs advertising the restaurant and other units are at the back of the complex facing the car park and not the main road - and are also broken; roofs leak when it rains and the renters are told to sort it out themselves.

    On the subject of the toilets; a woman comes once a day, if they are lucky, she gives them a brush and occasionally wields a mop.

  However, the toilets are for the use of everyone in the complex and by the time evening comes - the busiest time for a restaurant of course - the toilets are a tip. Customers complain continually.

    There is never any toilet paper and the water system is frequently on the blink. When it is working it tends to flood the toilets.

  Pass the buck  THERE is more to come. A second management firm called Club Marina Cove Management, which is a Henderson Land Development subsidiary (Henderson was the developer of Marina Cove) also haunts the Cove. Between the two of them they manage to pass the buck back and forth to suitably frustrate attempts at getting anything done, according to angry shop-keepers we spoke to.

    Club Marina is responsible for the car park (that much they do admit, mainly because parking fees are paid to them by the businesses) and quite a cushy little number they have going. During the week the first hour of parking is free and thereafter it costs $16 an hour. For comparison, the car park down the road from Lai See's office charges $12 an hour, and that's on a fairly prime site on Hong Kong Island.

  On public holidays and at the weekend there is no gratis first hour - its straight in for the $16. This, of course, is again the busiest time for restaurants. What happens is that the customer gets a ticket for the restaurateur to stamp, and presents the ticket to car park guard when leaving. At the end of the month Club Marina bills the business.

   One of our sources said his average monthly bill for parking was $1,500.

    The problem with the weekday charge is that although the first hour is free almost no one takes under an hour to eat a meal. So if you are charging $60 for a set-meal lunch, paying $16 on top for the car park is economic suicide.

   Over the past couple of months customers arriving for a takeaway on public holidays and weekends have been asked to pay the parking fee. This has depressed business so much that one takeaway owner has been forced to buy a scooter and run a home-delivery service.

   There are eight units lying empty. Businesses frequently come and go.

   They have certainly not been getting much in the way of support from the management firms in making their businesses a success.

  We spoke to Yang Yick, who promised they would improve their part of the service. The company is promising new bathroom fittings and a better cleaning regime. We shall see.

  The Henderson-owned management company says as far as the car-park is concerned, if the retailer and restaurateurs do not like it, tough. 'We run this as a business, not as a service for the shopping centre,' said Marina Cove Management's spokesman.

  How much longer people will want to park near the complex if all the shops close is a moot point.

  All in good time  YESTERDAY we were cruel about Peregrine's Options and Derivatives Fund.

   We thought they had provided Micropal figures for September 1, 1995 to September 15, 1995, fooled perhaps because Peregrine Asset Management has only just launched itself to the general investing public, and we mocked their claim of being number one in the Asia Ex-Japan sector.

  Of course, it was in fact September 1994 to September 1995 that was viewed. A very different thing. Mea culpa.

  But it was deuced lucky that Peregrine chose September 15 as the measuring day. If, for example, they had chosen September 1, 1994 to September 1, 1995, then the picture would have been just slightly different.

  Peregrine would then have been number four, with an offer-to-offer return of negative 1.62 per cent. And if the period had been extended to September 18, then Peregrine would have slipped back to number two position behind a Fidelity Fund.

  And, of course, the offer-to-offer price doesn't include the upfront fee or the management fees.

  Wise words  SOME funny stuff turns up in company results, but it isn't often that the chairman gets philosophical.

  'The pursuit of competitive strength in a tough business environment has had some impact on our corporate culture,' said chairman Whang Tar-choung, in a remarkably poetic chairman's review for Lam Soon (HK). 'Some colleagues have called it a hardening and a lessening of regard for individual emotions. These are the prices of success.'   To which we can only say, how true, how very true. But it can't be that tough if underlings still dare to proffer negative opinions on corporate culture to the boss.



Barbarians have Marina Cove in a boggy mess