Whether the future Taipei Sports Dome (巨蛋體育場) should be built on the Sungshan Tobacco Factory (松山菸廠) site or not was a question hotly debated yesterday at the weekly meeting of the Taipei City Government's heads of department.
The Taipei City Bureau of Cultural Affairs had planned to develop the tobacco factory site into a cultural heritage site.
"[The Cabinet] finds that there's no possibility that a spot of historic importance and a domed stadium can co-exist," government spokesman Su Tzen-ping (蘇正平) said at a press conference yesterday, citing a report prepared by Minister Without Portfolio Chen Chin-huang (陳錦煌), who is supervising the project.
Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), on Monday blamed the Cabinet for having failed to facilitate the project's land acquisition during the past year. However, Su yesterday flatly rejected Ma's accusation, saying that "the Cabinet is still waiting for the Taipei City Government's evaluation report before finalizing a decision."
According to Minister Chen, Su said that the city government has failed to act on a ruling reached at a meeting on Feb. 15, which said that the city government should carefully evaluate the project's feasibility if it was to be located near Sungshan domestic airport and then brief the Cabinet after flight heights and related issues were addressed.
However, on May 30 the Taipei City Bureau of Cultural Affairs announced its intention to build a cultural heritage park on the site, Su said.
"At the Cabinet discussions, the premier instructed Mayor Ma to submit the evaluation report within two months so that the project's construction can be started soon," Su said, adding that the premier insisted that the Cabinet has long supported the plan to build a large-scale stadium in Taipei.
According to Su, Ma responded by promising to submit the required report before the deadline at the Cabinet meeting yesterday.
Ma, however, later told reporters that he believed that it is more important for the Cabinet to discuss how the stadium should be built instead of where it should be built.
"The Cabinet should throw its support behind the city government to start the stadium's construction soon, rather than leaving the project's location in doubt," Ma said.
The project was initiated by then Taipei Mayor Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) years ago, who planned to build a sports stadium in Taipei large enough to accommodate at least 40,000 spectators.
The project was brought up again after Taipei successfully hosted the International Baseball World Cup over the past two weeks.
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