The Bureau of High Speed Rail confirmed yesterday that Cathay Life Insurance was chosen to develop the industrial district near the high-speed rail’s Taoyuan Station, adding that the firm and its investor plan to spend more than NT$20 billion (US$677 million) to develop the 21.88 hectare site.
The deal is currently the largest development project along the high-speed rail route, the bureau said.
Cathay was the only interested developer attending the bid, which was finalized on Monday, the bureau said. A contract is scheduled to be signed before the end of the year, the bureau said.
The bureau said Cathay had teamed up with Gloria Hotel Group to bid for the project because they saw the advantage of the industrial district being near the high-speed rail system, airport rail and the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport. They plan to turn the property into an “international business town.”
The bureau said the Cathay-Gloria team has planned to bring in the nation’s first outdoor shopping outlet, with more than 250 global brands. In its presentation to the bureau, the team said it has planned to build other facilities, including an office building for international corporations as well as an international hotel resort. It planned to expand the scale of development by attracting international businesses to establish operational bases at the site or build an amusement park, depending on the situation in the market.
The team estimated the entire development project, with its proximity to the nation’s two main railway systems and the airport, could draw more than 7 million visitors per year from around the nation and overseas, generate a tourism output of at least NT$10 billion and create more than 2,000 jobs.
The bureau said the contract would allow Cathay to have the exclusive right to use the property for 50 years, adding that its first stage of development is scheduled to become operational by the end of 2016.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater