How red tape blocks new uses for surplus Hong Kong factories
Excessive rules and high land premiums hinder efforts to fit the city's unused industrial buildings for new purposes, owners and architects say
Soccer Cages, a mini indoor soccer pitch under a wire-mesh enclosure, exemplifies the transformations inside Hong Kong industrial buildings over the past 20 years. Occupying the first floor of an old factory in Tsuen Wan, the soccer centre has been doing brisk business since it opened six months ago, attracting fans keen to polish their skills in air-conditioned comfort.
"Officials normally just turn a blind eye. Lands Department inspectors have come knocking on our doors, but as long as we don't open them, it's OK."
As the northward exodus of local manufacturing accelerated in the 1990s, makeovers of the spaces they used to occupy took off. Artists' studios, galleries, live music venues, children's playrooms, golf ranges, private kitchens and loft-style homes have popped up in industrial buildings, taking advantage of the bigger spaces and cheaper rents.
Some come within statutory plans that extended usage to activities including training and design. But many more conversions fall outside the remit. This illegal use drew attention again recently when the Lands Department issued warnings to several mini-warehouse operators in industrial buildings for breaching their conditions of use, and ordered the owners to rectify the situation. More recently, unscrupulous owners have turned their units into subdivided flats.
How underutilised industrial buildings can be turned over to alternative uses is a tricky issue in Hong Kong.
Decisions are easier when they are in poor condition: demolish and build again. But repurposing the structures is more challenging for several reasons - among them, fragmented ownership (of the city's estimated 1,400 industrial buildings, only about 400 are solely owned) and high premiums for converting to other usage.