In a new agreement with the MTR Corporate, Five big developers who collaborate to develop a residential estate in Tung Chung eventually decide to develop an additional floor area of 150,000 square feet for a residential estate, thus lowering the amount of a forsaked floor area to 350,000 square feet. The deal was successfully approved by the Town Planning Board. Before this approval, the five big developers had originally given up the floor area of 500,000 square feet because of an expensive premium paid for the Lands Department and an higher construction cost incurred for a deeper piling.

The five big developers consist of Heng Kei property, Sun Dei property, New World, Heng Lung and Swire property. They collaborate to develop a residential estate in Tung Chung in avoiding a higher risk which would have been incurred for a single developer.

Yesterday, the Town Planning Board has approved to amend the Master Layout plan. According to the new amendment, four residential blocks, instead of five, is laid out with lowering the total floor area from 1,517,024 square feet to 1,169,293. Consquently, the flat number is down by 400, from 1,940 to 1,540. The amendment encourages the developers to use the additional floor area of 150,000 square feet from the originally forsaked 500,000 square feet. New additional residential development will concentrate on the block 4 which is close to the phase two project of Hong Kong 興業.

According to the private developers, the first phase of Tung Chung Construction 3 would incure ten times more construction costs because of a geotechnical problem. However they fail to obtain a better terms for the land premium. Besides, due to an immense adverse influence on the property development above the Tung Chung MTR station by the air flight, the uppermost height of all buildings are constrained to 49 floors, excluding the base area for a plaform. So the developers at most build 49 floors for the residential block 4, which is similar to other three blocks in terms of the floor number. Since this, with an expected low profit, the deveplers forsaked to develop the floor area of 500,000 square feet which had been allowed by the Town Planning Board. In August before the deadline for accepting the suggested land premium, the developers had declined to the Lands Department on the premium of 3,7000 HK$b, each square foot which amounts to HK$740.

The private developers had commissioned a Consultant to conduct an investigation into this Tung Chung project. According to the report, as the studied construction site has a very rare but serious geotechnical problem, the deepest piling in the world have to be adopted. In consideration of the constuction cost and security, the developers declined to build one more residental block.

The first phase of the Tung Chung air express station, including 1-5 street Nos of the Tung Chung town covers the site area of 2,368,800 square feet. The area is planned for Comprehensive Development Area, its total floor area which amounts to 10,074,000 square feet; the floor area for residential use amounts to 1 million square feet. The deveopers will divide the whole project into three phases. In the first phase, three construction sites are included. The first one is in East bank bay (translated); the second one is completed commerial and hotel projects; the third one is planned for residential development which would be sold in the mode of (樓花) as early as in 2001/2002 and may be completed in construction in 2003

The article is translated from the original one published in Hong Kong Economic Journal