With less than a week before the deadline the Taipei City Government set for Farglory Group to finish safety reviews of the Taipei Dome, Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) yesterday said the two sides have not yet reached a consensus on the Dome’s future.
Ko made the comment in response to media queries about a meeting that took place about two weeks ago between him and Farglory chairman Chao Teng-hsiung (趙藤雄).
Ko had said that if Farglory does not pass seven safety reviews of the Dome by Thursday, he would dissolve the contract.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
Asked what they talked about, Ko said he and Chao illustrated their respective stance on the Dome impasse.
He said he gave Chao a review of events regarding the Dome — from Farglory’s deviation from the Dome’s construction plan, the city’s work suspension order on the Dome, to two recent investigation results by the Taipei High Administrative Court and the Control Yuan, both of which found that the city’s work suspension order to be within reason and legal parameters.
“Over the past year, many have suspected that we have been deliberately finding fault with Farglory,” Ko said. “You said that you do not want the city government to conduct the reviews, but you have not even passed the reviews administered by the Taiwan Building and Architecture Center.”
Farglory in July proposed that four safety reviews under the city’s purview be transferred to the center, which had undertaken four reviews of the project.
Ko said he asked Chao what he intends to do about the complex, given Farglory’s inaction over the build-operate-transfer (BOT) project.
According to the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper), Chao told Ko: “If you would not let me build it [the Taipei Dome], there is nothing I can do.”
The city should buy back the BOT project, Chao reportedly said.
The report said that Farglory on Tuesday delivered a 114-page proposal on resolving safety concerns about the Dome to the city government for review.
Taipei City Government spokesman Sidney Lin (林鶴明) said the city is disappointed that Farglory had not devised any plans to cut the complex’s maximum capacity to boost its readiness for emergency evacuation as it had promised.
Ko said the city would continue to prepare for contingencies in case the contract is dissolved, which he said would be a Hobson’s choice.
Asked whether a legal battle with a Farglory over the complex would take five years as media reports have said, rendering the complex a desolate site, Ko said the scenario would not necessarily occur, for if the city proposes to dissolve the contract, the firm will have three months to engage in negotiations with the city.
“I hope that he [Chao] will think it through,” Ko said.
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