No_3_March_and_April__1950 — Page 45

KING'S PARK FLATS

اور گرم

Photograph of the King's Park development, and lot plan showing access roads, garages, etc. The photograph was taken on 16th November, 1949

The occupation of the four blocks of Government apartments at King's Park in November of last year marks the completion of the ambitious programme to provide pleasant residential quarters for Government officials in the minimum possible time. The expenditure involved has been the subject of severe criticism from time to time, but nevertheless the fact remains that within a comparatively short space of time one hundred and eleven Government officials and their families were taken out of hotel rooms and other unsatisfactory quarters that were costing the Government a tremendous monthly levy and given homes that are comfortable and attractive.

Practically every Government department is severely handicapped because of lack of personnel. It has been extremely difficult to obtain qualifred officers for Hong Kong Government service and, at one time, so great was the dissatisfaction amongst the existing personnel as а result of conditions under which they were forced to live

The dining-room and sun porch corridor

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that wholesale resignations were contemplated to the danger of further sharp deterioration of departmental efficiency.

The very satisfactory quarters supplied, as a result of the construction of the Leighton Hill Flats, the Peak Mansions, Queen's Gardens, and finally this splendid development at King's Park, has removed a great deal of this dissatisfaction and from that point of view alone the investment can be considered an excellent one.

As is generally known, all the above mentioned build- ings are of similar design, the standarization of the type making possible considerable economy in the construction of succeeding buildings. The steel formwork which was designed for and used in the Leighton Hill Flats were sub- sequently utilized in the construction of other buildings and the experience gained in the construction of the Leighton Hill Fiats applied to the other apartment blocks resulted in considerably reduced costs. While we have not the exact figures before us we feel confident that the actual average cost per flat of the entire programme is no whit higher than that incurred in the construction of apartment houses built privately and offering equivalent accommodation to that obtained in these Government buildings.

In previous write-ups we have never had the oppor tunity of adequately describing and illustrating the interior appointments of these apartments. Many people are under the impression that they are extravagant in design and that there is a lot of waste space in the planning. Actually this is not so. The living room is fair sized, but the bed- rooms are only of medium dimensions. The feature of the apartment which may give the impression of waste space is a wide corridor which doubles as a passage way to the bedrooms and as a covered sitting out verandah. It must be remembered that most of the buildings, because of the location of the site, are not properly orientated and

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