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HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
Mr. Kam Nai-Wat (in Cantonese):-Thank you Mr. Chairman. Concerning Mr. CHEUNG'S reply, I would like to ask several questions. First, may I know when the Council decided to delete the wet goods market, the dry goods market, cooked food centres and the dry goods hawker bazaar, have we suggested the spaces allocated to the Council can be occupied by other municipal facilities? Secondly, it was decided that a private upmarket commercial food court would be provided by the LDC in the scheme. In the past, the UC's cooked food centre or food bazaars were able to provide cheap food and high quality service to the public, can we ensure that the Food Court can provide similar facilities in the area? Thirdly, do we have a timetable on the redevelopment of the Central Market?
Mr. Ambrose CHEUNG (in Cantonese):—The first question concerns the deleted facilities and whether we have considered replacing them by other facilities. We have had close contacts with the District Board on the redevelopment project. In 1990 the deletion of the cooked food centre, and the dry goods and wet goods markets was made on the basis of views and demands of the District Board. At that time, the Council made it clear that part of the facilities will be reviewed following the development of the project. Up to now, the Council has considered that the facilities involved in these 3 schemes have been provided or substituted. If you understand the geographical situation, the Central Market is very near the Jubilee Street. It is a minute's walk from Central Market. If you go to Wing Lok Street from Jubilee Street it is only 2 minutes' walk. The distance from the Wing Lok Street redevelopment project to the Sheung Wan Cooked Food Centre is about 7 minutes' walk. So, all in all, it is about 10 minutes' walk from one of these projects to another. When we considered abandoning or shelving some of these facilities, according to my record, I cannot see any strong demand from the District Board or the Council for substituting these facilities in these schemes. The second question concerns similar cooked food centres providing cheap service to the public. The Council's policy of building cooked food centre is not to provide cheap food to the public. The main purpose is to resite some fixed pitch hawkers hawking on the street. So this is a resiting policy, but not a policy for providing cheap food because many commercial organizations are willing to provide food and catering facilities to the public. The reason why we feel that a private up-market food court would be more suitable is that the site is in Central district. It is very close to our prime business area, so we feel that a private up-market food court would be more suitable.
On the timetable for redevelopment of the Central Market, as can be seen in my reply, LDC is now considering a new conceptual proposal which will abandon the Gage Street and only concentrate on the Central Market project. The concept is now being discussed between the LDC and the Central Government. But in the past years this Council have expressed its view very clearly that we do not like and are unwilling to give away the Central Market site. We hope the Central Market can continue to develop in the future. We also hope that the facilities in the Central Market can be redeveloped in situ. If the
£185
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