Taipei lost a round this week in its battle to preserve Novel Hall, after the city government’s Administrative Appeals Commission overruled the city’s imposition of a “subsidiary condition” requiring the Xinyi District (信義) site that is home to the theater to be used for artistic and cultural events.
City officials said they would continue their efforts to save Taipei’s first-ever privately run performing arts center from a developer’s wrecking ball. City residents should fully back this fight.
CTBC Holding Co owns the land that the theater and the old head office of CTBC Bank (formerly known as Chinatrust Commercial Bank) stand on. Having moved its headquarters to Nangang District (南港), the conglomerate wants to sell the site without any conditions, presuming that the buyer would want to demolish the office tower and the theater complex behind it.
The company says the city’s designation of the site as a “cultural landscape” and the subsidiary condition had scared away potential buyers and “has harmed citizens’ property rights.”
When it opened, Novel Hall was dedicated to Taipei by the Koo Group, which owned Chinatrust Financial Holding Co at the time. What about the city’s rights and those of its residents now?
For about two decades, CTBC has promoted its brand under the slogan: “We are family,” and promises on its Web site to uphold the values of being “caring, professional and trustworthy.”
However, both the holding company and the bank have proven themselves to be anything but in their handling of the Novel Hall issue. They received major benefits from the agreement to develop the land and now stand to profit substantially from its sale, yet they have demonstrated nothing but contempt for the city, its residents and the management and staff of the theater.
CTBC not only received a good deal on the land on which it built its headquarters, it was allowed to increase the height of the office tower from 45m to 85m after promising that it would provide part of the site for the performing arts and art exhibitions.
In the intervening years, China Trust expanded at a rapid clip, eventually outgrowing the Xinyi offices. In 2009, it announced that it planned to build new headquarters in Nangang. Not a word was said about moving the theater.
The following year, Novel Hall’s management began planning to upgrade the theater’s lighting and stage system, a multimillion-dollar project. Pulling the money together took longer than initially thought, despite a NT$20 million (US$653,300) contribution from the Ministry of Culture — so it was not until early 2012 that the theater closed for renovations. It reopened on Sept. 23 of that year.
Yet just over seven months later, CTBC dropped its bombshell, announcing that it would be selling the Songshou Road location as part of its move to Nangang, so the theater would have to close.
The duplicity of the holding company and the bank keeping silent about shuttering Novel Hall — including during the theater’s fundraising efforts — is equaled only by their audacity now in moaning about Taipei City Government hurting their rights.
Taipei has changed dramatically since Novel Hall opened in 1997. There are now a multitude of performance venues, from the tiny to the very large and more to come when the Taipei Performing Arts Center being built in Shilin District (士林) is completed.
However, the 935-seat Novel Hall remains a jewel, because of its design, location and that it is privately operated.
It must be saved.
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