10-year wait on harbourside homes to end

A massive private development in east Kowloon big enough to provide 5,200 flats in the next six years will be scrutinised by the Town Planning Board today after staying on the drawing board for a decade.

The Planning Department says, in a paper advising the board, that it has "no in-principle objection" to the Yau Tong Bay project proposed by a consortium led by Henderson Land Development.

"The application site is readily available for construction and would provide a significant number of small to medium-sized residential flats to meet the market demand," the developers have said, according to the paper.

The site, covering a total area of 99,000 square metres beside the Eastern Harbour Tunnel and zoned as a "comprehensive development area", is formerly an industrial area occupied by dockyards and wood workshops.

The project has been revised several times since it was first proposed in 2002. It now comprises 28 apartment blocks, four hotels, shops, and facilities for children and families, and is intended to be completed in two phases - the first by 2017 and the second by 2019.

A marina has been dropped because of technical difficulties and legal restrictions on reclamation from the harbour. A harbourside promenade will be built by the developers and it will link up with Yau Tong MTR station.

The consortium has acquired 83 per cent of the land, with the rest owned by the government and a few individual landlords, including an industrialist who wants to convert his factory block into a hotel.