Wong Chuk Hang Road is an unrelenting strip of smog-stained glass and empty industrial buildings, most decorated with hopeful 'for sale' signs in bright colours. Yet for part-time property developer Chris Dillon the place has real potential.
'Look at this,' he says, gesturing out of his vast, light-filled office at a large green area outside. 'We get egrets nesting in that tree! That sort of a view is the last thing that you'd expect from this neighbourhood.'
Dillon, who runs a small corporate communications firm, has developed three properties in the past six years, including his four-bedroom family home in Pok Fu Lam, and he has just published a book, Landed: An Expatriate's Guide to Buying and Renovating Property in Hong Kong.
As an English-speaking expat, he trod the road to renovation more or less alone, and his message is that where it was possible before, it's even easier now.
'When I started looking into this, there were just marketing materials prepared by people like real estate agents who had a horse in the game,' he says. 'It occurred to me that if you did write something from a neutral perspective it might be useful for people.'
The 3,500 sq ft Wong Chuk Hang office - his firm's headquarters and a rental space for photographers - is his latest project, and though it seems isolated now, it will be well placed when the proposed South and West Island MTR lines eventually open. Talk of hotel developments and neighbourhood revitalisation has given the area, near Ocean Park, a new buzz.