THE Matilda Hospital's donation of $150,000 touched Frank White. ''It's coming out of their Bazaar and Sedan Chair Race Charities Fund and is tremendously generous,'' says the pioneer behind the Warehouse project.
Two local corporations also pitched in last week - one pledged $100,000, the other $50,000 - though their contributions were greeted with mixed feelings.
''We're grateful for any help we get, but we're still far short of the $7 million we need by the end of the month,'' says Dr White, chairman of the project's organising committee. ''We had pinned our hopes on being operational by September. Now - well, Ijust don't know.'' Without that $7 million, his dream of providing teenagers with a place they can call their own, may have to be abandoned.
On any given Friday or Saturday night, scores of teenagers - most from affluent homes - can be seen aimlessly cruising the narrow streets of Lan Kwai Fong, many of them drunk and not a few high on dope.
New Year's Eve, 1992, ushered in the horror that had been waiting to happen. ''The tragedy which occurred in Lan Kwai Fong, taking 21 young lives and injuring many others, underscored the urgency with which the situation needs to be addressed,'' reads the Warehouse project report.
By the time it was written, the Warehouse Club was on the way to reality thanks to an inspired suggestion by the Government Property Administrator, Ian Wotherspoon: how about the Old Aberdeen Police Station? When Dr White, reader in anatomy at the University of Hong Kong and the father of two teenagers, first visited the 103-year-old red-brick building - unoccupied since the late 80s - he instantly saw its potential.
''Fantastic,'' he said, imagining what could be made of all that space: 6,000 square feet of it in the main, a two-storey building, plus a further 3,000 square feet in the former residential quarters and service buildings. And all of it set in verdant enclosed grounds.