Promoters fear hall closures mean top performers will bypass HK
Concert promoters are worried Hong Kong will run out of venues big enough to host major events over the next few years.
From the middle of next year, the Tamar site, which can accommodate 20,000 people, will no longer be available when construction work begins on the government's new headquarters. Next month's Wild Day Out, a 10-hour rock marathon, will probably be the site's last large-scale music event.
This will coincide with the HK$160 million facelift of the Coliseum, the most important venue for major Canto- and Mando-pop concerts, from August next year to March 2009. It is expected the Coliseum, which has to be booked a year in advance, will shut down for six months.
Construction work on the expansion of the Convention and Exhibition Centre started this summer and is expected to be completed in 2009. Exhibition halls, including popular concert venue Hall 3, will also be enlarged.
A spokeswoman for the centre said Hall 3 would be available for events during the construction period but alternatives were being developed to cater for some events during that time. But an exact schedule for the stages of the construction work has yet to be announced and it was not known when and by how much Hall 3's capacity would be affected.
