The owner of an historic property on Taipei’s Boai Road is to be fined after they continued with renovations despite the building being flagged for review as a cultural heritage site.
The property, which is located at 132 Boai Road in Taipei’s Zhongzheng District, was built in the 1920s during the Japanese colonial era. The building was surveyed by the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs in August last year, at which time it flagged the property for further review to determine its status as a cultural heritage site. Bureau officials then visited the property in December last year and February this year as part of the review process, the department said.
Photo: CNA
Properties flagged for review are granted temporary historic status, during which time owners are not permitted to dismantle or remove any part of the property’s structure, and are required to maintain and preserve the property, the department said.
However, despite the injunction the owner of the building at 132 Boai Road renovated the building and converted it into a reception area for presale housing properties, it said, adding that part of the renovations involved removing the building’s original wooden roof and replacing it with metal sheets. The department said a fine of NT$500,000 would be imposed on the contractor, and a fine of NT$300,000 imposed on the property owner.
During a meeting with department officials on Monday, the owner justified the renovation work saying that it was necessary as termites had infested the wood, which caused leaking and made the building dangerous.
The owner said that work had already begun before the injunction was imposed, and said he had suffered financial losses due to fines imposed on the contractor, and the loss of rent when the tenant was forced to vacate the property. Department officials said the fines were imposed because the owner continued renovation work after the injunction.
Separately, the contractor, Shuang Zheng Li Construction Co. (双正利建設), said that it continued work after the injunction was imposed as it was “unfamiliar with the Cultural Heritage Preservation Act (文化資產保存法).”
The bureau said it would urge the owner to restore the wall paint to its original state and rectify the water leakage. In the future, it would continue to work with the owner on drafting restoration, reuse and management plans for the property, and provide relevant subsidies and resources, it said.
Fast food chain McDonald's is to raise prices by up to NT$5 on some products at its restaurants across Taiwan, starting on Wednesday next week, the company announced today. The prices of all extra value meals and sharing boxes are to increase by NT$5, while breakfast combos and creamy corn soup would go up by NT$3, the company said in a statement. The price of the main items of those meals, if ordered individually, would remain the same. Meanwhile, the price of a medium-sized lemon iced tea and hot cappuccino would rise by NT$3, extra dipping sauces for chicken nuggets would go up
Yangmingshan National Park’s Qingtiangang (擎天崗) nature area has gone viral after a park livestream camera observed a couple in the throes of intimate congress, which was broadcast live on YouTube, drawing large late-night crowds and sparking a backlash over noise, bright lights and disruption to wildlife habitat. The area’s livestream footage appeared to show a couple engaging in sexual activity on a picnic table in the park on Friday last week, with the uncensored footage streamed publicly online. The footage quickly spread across social media, prompting a tide of visitors to travel to the site to “check in” and recreate the
Carrefour Taiwan is to begin using a new name from the start of July, but it cannot divulge the name until then, the chairman of the supermarket chain's parent company said today. President Chain Store Co chairman Lo Chih-hsien (羅智先) was asked by reporters after a shareholders' meeting to confirm whether the company has settled on a new name for the supermarket brand. In March, the government-registered name of two Carrefour Taiwan branches was quietly changed to "Le Chia Kang" (樂家康) in Chinese, raising speculation that has been selected as the name. Lo said that because of local regulations and contractual obligations, the
GROUNDED: A KMT lawmaker proposed eliminating drone development programs and freezing funding for counterdrone systems, despite China’s adoption of the technology China has deployed attack drones at air bases near the Taiwan Strait in a strategy aimed at overwhelming Taiwan’s air defense systems through saturation attacks, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said. The council’s latest quarterly report on China said that satellite imagery and open-source intelligence indicate that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) had converted retired J-6 fighter jets into J-6W drones, which the PLA has stationed at six air bases near Taiwan, five in China’s Fujian Province and one in Guangdong Province. The report cited J. Michael Dahm, a senior fellow at the US-based Mitchell Institute, as saying that China has
RSS