The Hong Kong government retreated on Tuesday from plans to build one of the world's largest cultural centers after real estate developers refused to participate, complaining that the financial terms had become too onerous.
The decision is a setback for several major museums. The Georges Pompidou Center in Paris and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and the Museum of Modern Art in New York had been vying for the right to run museums at the cultural center, which was to be several times the size of Lincoln Center.
The Pompidou Center persuaded President Jacques Chirac of France to visit Hong Kong in 2004 to make its case, while Thomas Krens, the director of the Guggenheim Foundation, had publicly described the initiative as "the most exciting opportunity in the world because of the scale and the location."
But the plan has been mired in controversy for more than a year, with local artists saying that Western cultural institutions were playing too large a role, while populists denounced early versions of the plan as too generous to developers.
In October the objections prompted the government to require that the lead developer of the office buildings, hotels and apartment buildings not only build the museums but also set up a US$3.87 billion trust fund to cover their operating costs and certain cultural activities over the next 30 years.
That stipulation prompted developers to withdraw their support for the plan over the last three weeks.
Rafael Hui (
Hui said at a news conference that the government was withdrawing its request for proposals after developers declined to submit bids meeting the government's new requirements. The government will also drop its insistence that much of the peninsula be covered with an elaborate outdoor canopy designed by Norman Foster. The canopy had been envisioned as a symbol of Hong Kong, as the Sydney Opera House is a symbol for Australia's equally famous harbor-fringing city.
Hui, using a traditional Chinese saying that it is sometimes necessary during a journey to repack and remount a horse, insisted that he had not given up on the project and that his new committee would report back in September.
"This is not a relaunch from scratch," he said. "The overall plan and key facilities of the project remain with strong support."
But Abraham Shek, the Legislative Council member elected by the city's real estate interests, said the government's retreat put in question whether any cultural district would be erected on the peninsula.
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