HONG KONG HOUSING AUTHORITY OFRSA⭑
PRESS RELEASE
新聞稿
Sunday, December 5, 1976
THE HI-BALL STRIKES, AND DOWN GOES THE OLD
AT SHEK KIP MEI
Swinging from a crane like the pendulum of a clock, a three-ton
hi-ball is crunching and crumping its way through seven Mark I blocks at
Lower Shek Kip Mei Estate in the latest stage of a $200 million redevelopment
scheme there.
Thus are the hands of time turning a full circle at Shek Kip
Mei, for there is where Hong Kong's public housing programme began in
1954, when eight of the first Mark I blocks were thrown up in one year
to provide roofs over the heads of 53,000 people made homeless on Christmas
Day, 1953, when a terible fire ripped through thousands of squatter huta.
Blow by blow, like a giant hammer, the hi-ball is smashing down
block after block to clear an area of almost six acres on which part of a
new-generation housing estate rivalling Of Man and Wah Fu will rise.
The first stage of a commercial complex of two storeys, featuring
.99 shops, markets with some 360 stalls of various sizes and 10 cooked-food
stalls, will also go up on the site formerly occupied by Blocks Four, Five
and Six.
The second stage of the commercial complex, which has yet to be
built, will include 46 shops, 80 market stalls, an emporium, a supermarket,
a restaurant, welfare premises, a school, kindergarten, nursery and 10
cooked-food stalls.
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