Destinations known | How Hong Kong’s ‘laughable’ Kai Tak airport redevelopment project is being shown up by Greece
- The Kai Tak development is still a long way from the grand visions reported when the old airport shut 24 years ago
- Greece’s own airport redevelopment site, The Ellinikon, appears to be progressing more decisively. We paid it a visit
When Kai Tak closed on July 6, 1998, the huge tract of land suddenly freed up held great promise for the people of Hong Kong.
In September 1998, the South China Morning Post reported on a HK$36 billion plan to build a “city within a city” at the former airport: “Housing for 320,000 people, 90,000 permanent jobs and the SAR’s largest urban park will be created on the 579-hectare site, more than half of which is to be reclaimed from the harbour.”
It was envisaged the development would take 18 years to complete – so, by 2016 – and would see the building of 118,000 flats with shops, government and school buildings, a hospital and godowns. There would be a 50-hectare park, a sports stadium, a transport museum and an aviation academy “to mark Kai Tak’s past”.
In the years since, other plans have been put forward for Kai Tak – including those for a tourism “node” and a monorail to join the whole thing up.
Fast-forward to today and all that stands where Jumbos once landed is a cruise terminal, opened in 2013, three public housing projects and a dozen or so private developments, as well as a hastily built Covid-19 isolation facility.
Other developments are under construction, but it’s fair to say the wide-eyed dreamer of 1998 would be underwhelmed with what’s been achieved in the intervening quarter of a century.