Taipei councilors yesterday called on the Taipei City Government to requisition the Taipei New Horizon (臺北文創) complex in Taipei’s Songshan Cultural Park, accusing the facility’s management of turning a tower meant to promote cultural and creative industries into a corporate headquarters.
“We hope that [Taipei} Mayor Ko [Wen-je (柯文哲)] can immediately move to cancel the city’s contract with Taipei New Horizon Corp, taking the building under full city management,” Taipei City Councilor Kao Chia-yu (高嘉瑜) of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said.
“Taipei New Horizon needs to return to the spirit of culture and creativity,” Kao said, “It’s unacceptable to claim that everything done at the site is related to culture and rent out space to all comers.”
While the Taipei City Government’s aim in permitting the construction of the 13-story building was to supplement the Songshan Cultural Park by providing office space to small businesses in cultural and creative industries, Kao said that with half of the building’s office space awarded to the Fubon Group, the building was in effect a huge corporate office.
She also criticized the use of the building’s conference space, saying that the managing corporation had adopted an extremely broad definition of “culture” which allowed the space to be rented out for weddings and parties.
Kao condemned what she called the excessive profits the building generates for the Fubon Group and Taiwan Mobile Co, who constructed the building as part of a build-operate-transfer project on the site of the former Songshan tobacco factory on prime real estate in Taipei’s eastern business district.
She said the site’s contribution to city coffers had fallen short, with the city collecting only NT$560,000 in operating frees from the managing corporation last year, far below the annual NT$6 million (US$187,423) originally promised to the city council by the administration.
In response to Kao’s criticism, Taipei City Government’s Department of Cultural Affairs officials acknowledged that some of Taipei New Horizon’s management decisions had led to a “poor public image” and said that they were holding discussions with the firm to adjust contract terms.
While the city government could assume ownership of the building under the current contract, officials privately said that this was unlikely given the high price tag, which could be as high as NT$10 billion.
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