Cheung Kong (Holdings) gained an unexpected bonus in its redevelopment of the historic Marine Police headquarters in Tsim Sha Tsui: an additional 1,310 square metres of valuable floor space not counted in the original survey.
And when the government negotiated a deal with the company last year for it to pay a premium for exceeding a limit on new construction during the site's makeover, it got another bonus: a charge of HK$63,100 per square metre instead of the market price of HK$1 million.
In all, the property giant apparently netted a windfall of HK$1.5 billion, a review of the project shows.
In response to inquiries, the Lands Department gave no details of how the premium was assessed. Neither did it say why and how officials incorrectly measured the size of the historical buildings in the first place.
When Cheung Kong subsidiary Flying Snow won the tender in May 2003 to revitalise the abandoned Grade 1 monument, the floor space in the existing buildings was estimated at 4,300 square metres. But building plans displayed for public inspection after completion of the project, now dubbed 1881 Heritage, show the existing buildings contain 5,610 square metres - almost a third more space than the original estimate.
This astonished a leading surveyor, who said these days mistakes of such magnitude are almost unheard of. 'If you're talking about surveys conducted decades ago, I can understand it because the equipment used in those days was not as advanced as what we are using today. But when the case is only a few years ago, I don't understand how it happened,' Charles Chan Chiu-kwok said.
