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Residents decry plan for Taipei Dome Complex

Chaos erupted yesterday at a seminar on the transportation assessment of the Taipei Dome Complex, with local residents accusing the city government and the project’s contractor of colluding for profit and ignoring their concerns.

Saying that the project was planned and approved in a “black box,” residents from the Xinyi (信義), Daan (大安) and Songshan (松山) districts surrounded the designated site for the indoor stadium, demanding that the contractor and the city reassess the project and call it off if necessary.

Shouting matches erupted among the participants, with residents angry that they had been left out of three previous meetings at which transportation plans for the stadium complex were assessed.

The Farglory Group, which signed a contract with the city government in October 2006 to manage the project on a BOT (build-operate-transfer) basis, plans to invest more than NT$23 billion (US$ 700 million) in the 429,000m² complex — called the Taipei Culture and Sports District or “Taipei Dome.”

Before it can begin work on the complex, however, the city government must assign the land rights to Farglory and give it the necessary building permits, which are contingent on passing a transportation assessment.

The complex, which includes a 40,000-seat indoor stadium with surrounding shopping and residential districts and is scheduled to be completed by 2010, will be located on the site of the historic Songshan Tobacco Factory at the corner of Zhongxiao East Road and Guangfu South Road in Taipei.

Local residents fear that the stadium will create a traffic nightmare in an already congested part of the city.

“This is collusion between businessmen and government officials,” one protester shouted. “It is obvious that the government is helping a certain conglomerate.”

Aaron Huang, a consultant of the nongovernmental Global Talentrepreneur Innovation and Collaboration Association and an area resident, told reporters that the opinions of the residents were totally excluded from the decision-making process.

“No one from the company or the government has ever consulted us and every meeting they have had was under the table,” he said. “We will not accept the fact that they are holding this seminar just to ‘notify’ us of what they plan to do.”

But Tsai Chung-yi (蔡宗易), an executive in Farglory’s public affairs department, said that on the advice of the city government, the company had invited transportation experts to previous meetings to help assess congestion issues related to the plan.

Those experts, Tsai said, were invited to represent the interests of local residents.

At the seminar, Farglory presented supporting measures to ease congestion, but Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Lee Ching-yuan (李慶元) said the measures were useless and impractical.

“To build such a big complex right in the heart of the city is absolutely preposterous, ”Lee said. “No advanced countries or even the Olympic stadiums in Beijing were built in the city center.”

He urged the project to be reviewed again, arguing that Taipei City Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) should not accept the deal without questioning an incorrect decision made by his predecessor, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九).

Democratic Progressive Party Taipei City Councilor Hung Chien-yi (洪健益) said the project would definitely paralyze transportation in the area.

“It is not only a joke but also has no chance to succeed, ” Hung said. “The rights of the general public are being sacrificed for the profits of a big company.”
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