The Taipei City Government yesterday detailed plans to transform the Huannan Market (環南市場) in Wanhua District (萬華) into a modernized marketplace, promising residents more parking spaces and vendors that business will not be disrupted during the construction period that is to begin on Sunday.
Built in 1978, the traditional indoor market, which houses 1,323 stalls, is plagued by dirtiness and has fallen into disrepair, Taipei Department of Economic Development Commissioner Lin Chung-Chieh (林崇傑) told a news conference yesterday morning.
The construction is to be carried out in two stages, with the first stage, scheduled to begin on Sunday and be completed in August 2019, focusing on building an “interim” market, Lin said.
Stage two, which would see a new structure integrated with the interim market, is to take place on the site of the original Huannan Market building, which is to be torn down after all vendors move into the interim market, he said.
The project is to be completed in February 2022, he said.
As the interim market is to be built on a parking lot, the city government has zoned out an area along a nearby riverbank that is to be converted into a parking lot, with 740 spaces for cars and 299 spaces for scooters, Lin said.
Taipei Market Administration Office division chief Ho Hsiang-ching (何相慶) said vendors’ stalls would be redistributed after stage two is completed, adding that calculations conducted by the agency showed that the interim market would have enough space to accommodate all 1,323 stalls.
Taipei Department of Public Works Commissioner Pong Cheng-sheng (彭振聲) said that the new market would be equipped with rainwater recycling and undergound wastewater treatment systems.
It would meet the requirements of a “green” structure, featuring water-saving, energy-saving and carbon reduction systems, Pong said.
“If you want to learn about a city in 30 minutes, visit a market, as markets are a cross-section of people’s everyday life,” Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) said.
Ko said the plan to reinvent the market had gone through four mayors and been in limbo for 18 years.
He said he was able to finalize the project because his administration had shown greater resolve in communicating with vendors.
However, as moving the market into a new building cannot guarantee sanitation, the municipal government would extend its modern management styles to the market, he said.
The project is the first in a series to renew Taipei’s traditional markets, such as Taipei Agricultural Products Marketing Co’s First Produce Market and the Taipei Fish Market (台北漁市), he said.
Asked by reporters whether he was “at his wits’ end” over staffing issues at Taipei Agricultural Products Marketing over a prolonged power struggle between the city, the Council of Agriculture and former Yunlin County commissioner Chang Jung-wei (張榮味), Ko said: “How could I be at my wits’ end? Are you kidding me?”
He declined to outline his strategy to pressure the firms’ directors to elect a new president.
A report published by Chinese-language online news outlet Storm Media yesterday quoted Lu Chuan-li (路全利), the company’s chief secretary, as saying that an extempore board of standing directors meeting has been scheduled for Nov. 30 to elect the company’s president.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
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