XN000022-1976-12-05 — Page 8

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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