Nearly 2,000 flats planned as Hong Kong’s Urban Renewal Authority targets 62-year-old tenements for wrecking ball
- Authority estimates about HK$10 billion will be needed to rehouse and compensate 2,100 families in Kim Shin Lane tenement buildings
- About 1,000 flats expected to be provided on Kim Shin Lane site by 2031, with another 830 on a pair of nearby government plots two years later
Hong Kong’s Urban Renewal Authority (URA) will redevelop more than 2.6 hectares of land in Cheung Sha Wan, including a cluster of 62-year-old tenement buildings, to provide nearly 2,000 private flats.
The authority estimated about HK$10 billion (US$1.28 billion) would be needed to rehouse and compensate around 2,100 families in the Kim Shin Lane blocks, which were generally in “poor condition” and had a large number of subdivided flats.
“Kim Shin Lane has very old tenement buildings built in 1959, with blocks [aged] over 60. Its building environment is not very good,” Mike Kwan Yee-fai, the URA’s general manager for planning and design, told a press conference on Friday.
“It is not [financially feasible] to redevelop Kim Shin Lane alone, therefore we have done a wider planning study to identify the opportunities and constraints of the area in Sham Shui Po.”
That meant the project would include the redevelopment of two nearby sites – 1.9 hectares of government land where Cheung Sha Wan Sports Centre is located, and a sitting-out area and maintenance depot linked with a small part of Sham Shui Po Sports Ground.
