Residents of one of the city's largest private housing estates threatened to stop a construction project with their 'flesh and blood' after they failed to stall the development despite trying to do so for a year.
Cheung Chi-yin, spokesman for a residents' group at the 40-year-old Mei Foo Sun Chuen estate, said up to 300 people - including the old and the wheelchair-bound, would lie on the ground outside the construction site to stop vehicles from entering when work is scheduled to begin next week.
The group has been fighting a property development plan on an old oil depot site which they said would block the view and ventilation of two towers - numbers 8 and 3. 'The site is just three metres from our homes. It will not only block our light but also the air for the entire estate. The developer is forcing us to leave,' said Cheung, who has lived in Tower 8 for 14 years. More than 200 residents staged a protest outside the site yesterday, urging the developer, Cheung Tat, to drop its plan. They began their battle last year when they found the former oil depot, which has been vacant for more than 12 years, would be the site of a 20-storey residential building after the developer extended the site area by buying a private road nearby.
'We have been paying for the road's maintenance for a decade, but our estate's management company did not even consult us before selling the road,' Cheung said.
Tower 8 has always been the most expensive block in the estate as a third of its flats face a garden located beyond the old oil depot.
Residents are worried their homes' values - which now stand at about HK$4,000 per square feet, will drop by at least 10 per cent when the building goes ahead.