The Taipei City Government on Monday next week is scheduled to reopen bidding for contractors to develop the area near Taipei Main Station — stretching from the site of the old city council building, and Taipei’s North Gate (北門) — to create a “museum strip” to cultivate a sense of cultured arts in the area, Taipei Deputy Mayor Charles Lin (林欽榮) said.
The project would establish more than six museums. Using paraphernalia from the old city hall building as the main exhibit, the site would become the Taipei City Vision Museum, Lin said, adding that the Beimen post office would become the Post Office Affairs Museum; the old Directorate-General of Highways Building — a city-designated heritage site — would become a photography museum; and the Mitsui Warehouse (三井倉庫) would become a museum of “memories.”
The sixth museum would be on rail transport, using the headquarters of railways building under the Japanese colonial government, Lin said.
The city government also said it planned to turn the pedestrian land bridge near the old city council building into a sightseeing destination.
In addition, the Taipei Department of Finance said low-level buildings would become part of the City Vision Museum project and headquarters for various non-governmental organizations, and mid-rise to tall buildings would become hotels or office buildings.
However, the city government twice put the contract out for tender in 2014 with no success and Department of Finance Deputy Director Chen Chih-ming (陳志銘) said the city government’s entitled premiums for the project has already been lowered to NT$32.2 billion (US$961 million).
Due to the 41 percent increase in current real-estate prices, the government has decided to lower the entitled premiums to NT$26 billion.
Lin said he hoped the spirit of culture and liberal arts would revive the area and that the museums would bring back bookshops along Chongqing Road, which had enjoyed a booming business tracing back to the Japanese colonial era.
China might accelerate its strategic actions toward Taiwan, the South China Sea and across the first island chain, after the US officially entered a military conflict with Iran, as Beijing would perceive Washington as incapable of fighting a two-front war, a military expert said yesterday. The US’ ongoing conflict with Iran is not merely an act of retaliation or a “delaying tactic,” but a strategic military campaign aimed at dismantling Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and reshaping the regional order in the Middle East, said National Defense University distinguished adjunct lecturer Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), former McDonnell Douglas Aerospace representative in Taiwan. If
TO BE APPEALED: The environment ministry said coal reduction goals had to be reached within two months, which was against the principle of legitimate expectation The Taipei High Administrative Court on Thursday ruled in favor of the Taichung Environmental Protection Bureau in its administrative litigation against the Ministry of Environment for the rescission of a NT$18 million fine (US$609,570) imposed by the bureau on the Taichung Power Plant in 2019 for alleged excess coal power generation. The bureau in November 2019 revised what it said was a “slip of the pen” in the text of the operating permit granted to the plant — which is run by Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) — in October 2017. The permit originally read: “reduce coal use by 40 percent from Jan.
ECHOVIRUS 11: The rate of enterovirus infections in northern Taiwan increased last week, with a four-year-old girl developing acute flaccid paralysis, the CDC said Two imported cases of chikungunya fever were reported last week, raising the total this year to 13 cases — the most for the same period in 18 years, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. The two cases were a Taiwanese and a foreign national who both arrived from Indonesia, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The 13 cases reported this year are the most for the same period since chikungunya was added to the list of notifiable communicable diseases in October 2007, she said, adding that all the cases this year were imported, including 11 from
Prosecutors in New Taipei City yesterday indicted 31 individuals affiliated with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for allegedly forging thousands of signatures in recall campaigns targeting three Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers. The indictments stem from investigations launched earlier this year after DPP lawmakers Su Chiao-hui (蘇巧慧) and Lee Kuen-cheng (李坤城) filed criminal complaints accusing campaign organizers of submitting false signatures in recall petitions against them. According to the New Taipei District Prosecutors Office, a total of 2,566 forged recall proposal forms in the initial proposer petition were found during the probe. Among those