Not going ahead with the West Kowloon Cultural District is really not an option - speaking as a tax-paying Hong Kong citizen. The danger of being preyed on by greedy property developers has been removed, and the government has come up with a more acceptable plan for the project. Now I look forward to some exciting action on that desolate-looking patch of land on our harbourfront sooner rather than later. Aren't we positioning ourselves to be a leading-event capital? Don't we want to collect the tourist dollars that do so much for our economy and bring back queues to our taxi stands? It's obvious that financial centres cannot continue to function without a vibrant cultural scene. They need to compete among themselves in attractiveness to draw in the talented, creative and ambitious to their shores. We have no reason to want to be left behind. The price tag on the cultural district is HK$19 billion. Spread it among the 7 million Hongkongers over 30 years, and it comes to just HK$90 a year per person. That's less than the cost of two cinema tickets. It seems a very small price to pay - if only to ease the crunch of visitors who throng the Peak and other attractions. As a member of the cultural hub's museum advisory group, I tend to be a tad less ebullient than some, for I have more questions than answers about the project. The shortage of arts venues, especially in the urban area, is getting worse. On average, half of the applications to rent space from the Leisure and Cultural Services Department are regularly turned down. If we see the cluster of venues to be built in West Kowloon as a solution to the venue drought we're facing, we still have nine long years to wait for rain to come. Meanwhile, what to do? We have big plans for a flagship museum - dubbed M+ - an innovative proposal emerging from eight months of discussion and intense debate. Despite the 30 per cent downsizing of the original, proposed floor area, the envisaged museum will have close to 900,000 sq ft of gross floor area in its first phase, and over 1.3 million sq ft eventually. That's pretty ambitious, considering the rather modest size of the collections in our museums. Space of that magnitude requires a tremendous amount of activities to make it work. The programme output of Tokyo's new National Arts Centre, which is being run on a similar concept, shows there is no time to waste in training artists, curators and arts managers. The government controls over 95 per cent of the city's arts resources and venues. West Kowloon's proposed mode of operation is a public-private partnership - very different from our current model. The transition from one to another can be compared to that of a state-controlled economy changing to an open-market economy. Once we embark on the West Kowloon project, it's not a question of why we should make this transition, but how. There are good examples of the proposed cultural and commercial mix in operation. The Esplanade in Singapore and Federation Square in Melbourne have successfully blurred the lines between the serious business of appreciating fine arts and enjoying fine food. West Kowloon shouldn't be seen as cultural infrastructure to be built in isolation. It relates closely to our distribution of other cultural sites in the city. Before its completion, it would be a good idea to find uses for other potential arts spaces - such as the old Central Police Station, the former Kai Tak airport site and disused court houses - and make them training grounds for operating West Kowloon. This should be written into the terms of reference for the preparatory West Kowloon Cultural District Authority. West Kowloon has been repeatedly challenged, and even partially revoked, all for the sake of the greater public interest. Now the curtain is up for another round of public consultation. Let's see how well it withstands the firepower of public scrutiny. Benny Chia is director of the Fringe Club
