f
.....2
8.
petition:
a)
b)
c)
d)
The following are the salient factors giving rise to this
the Hong Kong Government has rightly made available for the construction of a Cultural Complex for public use an immensely prominent and prestigious piece of land;
on this land stands a building considered by people of Hong Kong to be of architectural merit and of historic and sentimental value;
to implement the proposed development it is the present intention of the Hong Kong Government to demolish most of this structure;
this building, formerly the railway terminus, with its integral clock-tower, is known as the Kowloon Canton Railway station building. His Excellency the Governor of Hong Kong, Sir Murray MacLehose has ruled that the tower alone is to be preserved 'for the time being', but that the station building itself is to be demolished;
e) Your Petitioners maintain that the station building and the
tower are one and inalienable, and that one without the other would be a ridiculous compromise and a parody of architecture. With imagination, the structure can be recycled and integrated in the new Cultural Complex to the benefit of Hong Kong people to whom it belongs;
f)
no adequate machinery currently exists for public participation in, or influence upon, the town planning process in Hong Kong;
g) profound anxiety and cynicism exist in Hong Kong over serious
mistakes and errors committed in recent years by the Hong Kong Government (e.g. the removal, and now the plan ned replacement, of a vital stretch of railway line, after having built a new terminal further up the line), and mistakes and errors on the part of the Urban Council (e.g. the waste of a very large sums of public money on two domes to build one planetarium), and over the likelihood of these mistakes and errors being compounded by present hasty and piecemeal official schemes for the Tsim Sha Tsui Peninsula and the Cultural Complex there.
9.
The strength of public opinion in this matter may be gauged from the Press File accompanying the Hong Kong Heritage Society's Petition to His Excellency the Governor, and from the response to the Society's signature campaign in support of the preservation of the KCR building.
10.
As already stated, His Excellency the Governor saw fit to reject this Society's Petition presented in July 1977. This was done in a manner which inevitably leads Your Petitioners to conclude it had not been given the careful consideration that it deserved. Furthermore, the Hong Kong Government's letter dismissing the petition contains a number of errors, misleading statements, and misrepresentations of the Society's It also contains some serious falsehoods. Together, these suggest (a) an intent to mislead the public and (b) maladministration.
.....to be cont'd.....
case.
exhibit 2
exhibit 3
exhibit 4