Flower Market renewal plans unveiled
The Urban Renewal Authority (URA) on Friday unveiled plans to redevelop several sites around the city’s famous Flower Market, as part of a wider renewal of Yau Ma Tei and Mong Kok. The zone is one of five core areas identified in the district for redevelopment.  Chief Executive John Lee gave instructions for the launch of the project in his Policy Address last year. The plan involves the redevelopment of plots along Boundary Street which include the neighbourhood sports centres and football pitch. The redevelopment zone would be turned into a municipal complex with an underground car park, as well as a sizeable waterway park stretching to Nullah and Nathan roads. The URA said because this is mostly government land, it hoped to start construction soon so that it could be completed in 2033 at the earliest. Other phases of the project could be finished two years after that, as the authority plans to knock down several buildings on four small plots along Flower Market Road and turn them into shops and parks.  The URA's planning and design director, Lawrence Mak, said the four plots’ ratios would be moved to a bigger site on nearby Sai Yee Street, allowing for the development of some 1,300 flats on a 40-storey commercial and residential block. "The whole idea of this transfer of plot ratio is to realise the development potential in this project, because they are relatively small and disjointed sites," he said at a press conference. "So there will be not much planning benefits if we redevelop these buildings." The URA plans to spend around HK$2.5 billion to acquire the necessary plots, which are now occupied by some 275 households and 30 shops. Mak pledged the authority would try to preserve the iconic Flower Market, noting that 20 of the affected retail outlets are flower shops, adding there were more than 100 such shops outside the renewal zone. Despite the authority recording a net loss in the 2022-23 financial year, as well as the overall economic uncertainty, Mak said profit-making wasn’t a consideration when examining urban renewal projects. He added the Flower Market project was relatively small, and the authority hopes to do its best to carry out renewals with limited resources.