CTBC Bank (中國信託銀行) yesterday signed an agreement with the Taipei City Government to preserve Novel Hall (新舞台) in Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義).
“[CTBC] has been swift and resolved the issue without attaching any conditions,” Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) said, thanking the firm for bringing a “happy ending” to an issue that had dragged on for two years.
The medium-sized performance center was constructed 18 years ago on what is now prime real estate in Taipei’s east district.
After CTBC moved its headquarters to Taipei’s Nangang District (南港), it sought to sell Novel Hall along with its neighboring former headquarters, raising the possibility of the hall being demolished to make way for new construction.
The city government tried to preserve the site by designating it a “cultural landscape,” attaching a subsidiary condition requiring it to be used for artistic and cultural events. However, the city’s Administrative Appeals Commission overruled the condition on restricting site changes last month.
The city’s Urban Planning Commission had separately required that the performance center be preserved as part of site rezoning, while promising to award any developer with additional “volume incentives” in return.
Taipei Deputy Mayor Charles Lin (林欽榮) said CTBC had agreed to preserve the site without being awarded any of the “volume incentives.”
Lin, who handled the building’s case when he was a section head with the Department of Urban Development in the 1990s, added that the firm had not received any “volume incentives” for the performance hall when it was originally constructed.
Department of Economic Development Commissioner Lin Chong-chieh (林崇傑), who was also responsible for the case during the 1990s, had earlier said that the firm had received “hidden incentives.”
“Time solves many problems,” ChinaTrust Charity Foundation chairman Jeffrey Koo (辜仲諒) said, attributing CTBC’s decision to new government regulations, as well as negotiations with the city government.
He said that CTBC had always wanted to hold on to the former headquarters building and had only sought to sell it to meet legal restrictions.
The Financial Supervisory Commission this week eased restrictions on banks’ use of any real estate they own if they provide space to cultural and artistic groups.
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