APPENDIX II
FINANCE
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No. HKUAC 31b
Site and Buildings
1.
The University Committee of 1939 recommended the removal of the University to a site outside the very crowded municipal limits of Hong Kong. The present site, on a hill sloping sharply to the harbour, of remarkable natural beauty, had become for Hong Kong what the College gardens are for Cambridge and Cxford. But the site was never planned as a whole and hence it has been used very uneconomically. A consideration that weighed when the transfer of the University was recommended was that the University was impeding the natural growth of the city of Victoria. A committee in 1940 reconsidered the whole matter with great care and produced plans and drawings to show that properly used the site would accommodate a University easily twice its size at that date. Provision to meet municipal claims was made by a proposal to surrender part of the site for town extension an. for rocâ construction. By levelling and filling the existing inadequate land for games could be very greatly increased. These plans and detailed recommendations were almost certainly lost in the Japanese destruction of the University Tecor S. But sufficient of the proposals is remembered by members of this Committee finally to dispose of the idea of the 1939 Committee that a change of site was essential for development.
2.
A new Science building was completed about three months before the Japanese invasion. It was planned to take existing classes in Chemistry, Physics, Botany and Zoology, but in the planning the architect was directed to the view that after a few years it was hoped that the complete block might be required for Chemistry alone. For a University such as is now projected this block should be assigned to the Chemistry Department, and additional accommodation would have to be provided of no less. space for Physics at a cost in pre-war price of about £25,000 to £30,000. Accommodation for Botany, Geology and probably Geography, would also be necessary at a somewhat lower cost, perhaps £15,000, since accommodation for research work in Marine Zoology is already provided in the new Fisheries Research Institute. The new equipment for these Laboratories will cost little less than £40,000, if the UNESCO inventories for the re-establishment of Laboratories in institutions in devastated areas is taken as the basis of calculation.
3. The cost of rehabilitation of the existing buildings of the Faculties of Science and Arts cannot be computed, as no information is available about the cost of building in post-war Hong Kong. All building materials except bricks and cement are to be imported and the demand is very great. A sum of £20,000 for this work would not seem too high. The buildings of the Medical Faculty had, before the wor, ceased to be adequate and they have been so sited against the hillside that extensions are impossible. By a makeshift arrangement one new building might
1.
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