Lam calls for HKCEC Phase IV

At a reception marking 18 years of the Hong Kong Convention & Exhibition Centre, Fred Lam, the Executive Director of its owners, the Hong Kong Trade Development Council, put down a marker calling for industry support for a further phase of development at the venue after the current, Phase III works are completed. He suggested that, in order for Hong Kong to remain competitive against its neighbours such as Guangzhou and Shenzhen, it needed more downtown space than even the current extension (we reported here on its controversial approval last year).

This call will, no doubt, greeted with some 'interest' by the management team at AsiaWorld-Expo located out at the Hong Kong Airport. It will also be watched closely by Hong Kong's increasingly vociferous environmental hawks who are policing with some ferocity the new policy of no more reclamations in Hong Kong harbour. The nearby bus station must be, one assumes, the site that Lam is still eyeing for Phase IV.

The reception was staged as the final event in Atrium 1 on the footbridge linking the Phase 1 and Phase 2 sections of the HKCEC. That section of the venue will shortly be closed to accommodate the extensions of Halls 1, 2 and 3 which comprise Phase III.