Taxpayers face big bill for mansion

Owner entitled to payout after work on HK$430m site blocked

The government yesterday brought a halt to construction work which has badly damaged historic King Yin Lei mansion, but lawyers and architects said declaring it a proposed monument had left key questions about its future unanswered.

They said the administration faced having to cover the cost of restoring the iconic property on Stubbs Road, Mid-Levels, and pay the owner millions of dollars in compensation for blocking its redevelopment.

With the gazetting of the 71-year-old Chinese-style mansion as a proposed monument, no one can demolish, remove, obstruct, deface or interfere with it without permission while the Antiquities Authority considers over the next 12 months whether to declare it a monument.

Heritage activists said the government had missed two opportunities to declare King Yin Lei a monument - once in January 2003, when the Town Planning Board inspected it, and again 10 months ago when, after repeated requests to then owner Stephen Yow Mok-shing, the Antiquities and Monuments Office was allowed to survey the 25,000 sq ft building.

In July, King Yin Lei was sold for redevelopment for a reported HK$430 million to a British Virgin Islands company, ICE Wisdom, believed to be controlled by a Hong Kong tycoon.

Solicitor Daniel Wong Kwok-tung said the protection of property rights was stipulated in the Basic Law and should not be overridden unless the public interest was involved.