Greater Taichung Mayor Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) has temporarily pulled the plug on the ambitious Taiwan Tower project, citing concerns over safety and its costs, which have ballooned from NT$8 billion (US$253.5 million) to NT$15 billion.
The budget has surged to a level that “is not in line with the Greater Taichung Council’s resolution,” Lin said at a city hall meeting yesterday.
Lin said that the Taiwan Tower, a major project pushed by his predecessor, three-term mayor Jason Hu (胡志強), is problematic in terms of design, structural complexity and safety.
Photo: Chen Pin-chu, Taipei Times
Lin said he would organize a special team to review it and come up with a possible replacement plan.
“Making a wrong decision is more horrible than corruption,” Lin said, adding that he would rather pay the penalty for breaking the contract than pay NT$15 billion to build the tower.
Lin said that losses caused by the suspension and compensation payments are estimated at about NT$300 million.
Photo: CNA
Taiwan Tower was an idea championed by Hu, who planned to make the 300m-tall building a landmark for the city after it was upgraded to a special municipality in 2010.
Designed by Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto, who won an international competition in 2011 to draw up plans for the building, Taiwan Tower’s ornate steel structure was inspired by the trunk of a banyan tree.
The tower was to be built on a 4.4-hectare lot and was billed as “the Taiwanese version of the Eiffel Tower.”
If completed, it would be home to an observation platform, restaurants and environmental quality monitoring stations, the municipal government said.
Construction has yet to begin for the project planned for the Taichung Gateway economic and trade park.
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus yesterday said it opposes the introduction of migrant workers from India until a mechanism is in place to prevent workers from absconding. Minister of Labor Hung Sun-han (洪申翰) on Thursday told the Legislative Yuan that the first group of migrant workers from India could be introduced as early as this year, as part of a government program. The caucus’ opposition to the policy is based on the assessment that “the risk is too high,” KMT caucus secretary-general Lin Pei-hsiang (林沛祥) said. Taiwan has a serious and long-standing problem of migrant workers absconding from their contracts, indicating that
SPACE VETERAN: Kjell N. Lindgren, who helps lead NASA’s human spaceflight missions, has been on two expeditions on the ISS and has spent 311 days in space Taiwan-born US astronaut Kjell N. Lindgren is to visit Taiwan to promote technological partnerships through one of the programs organized by the US for its 250th national anniversary. Lindgren would be in Taiwan from Tuesday to Saturday next week as part of the US Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs’ US Speaker Program, organized to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) said in a statement yesterday. Lindgren plans to engage with key leaders across the nation “to advance cutting-edge technological partnerships and inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers,”
RSS