Less than one month is left for the public to submit their ideas and opinions about what should be done with the 6,000 square-metre site bordered by Hollywood Road and Aberdeen, Staunton and Shing Wong Streets, just west of Central.
The site, which has sat empty for 15 years, was the location of the Asiatic Police Quarters (later named the Police Married Quarters) from 1950.
It was previously home to Queen's College which, in its earlier guise as the Central School, was the government's first attempt at secular education to create an English-speaking Chinese and Eurasian elite in Hong Kong.
Before that, a temple existed on the Shing Wong Street side of the area and some records also speak of a mental asylum.
Excavations by the Antiquities and Monuments Office have discovered granite shafts and plinths of the boundary and retaining walls, steps, tiles and other ceramics from the school. It concluded such heritage features should be integral to whatever new design graces the site.
But no consensus has emerged as to what happens next.
At one point the Central Market was to be relocated there. Then, developers planned three residential tower blocks. In a belated response to locals' growing concerns about gross neighbourhood densities and the need to preserve what little heritage is left, the government took the site off the sales list last year.
