After a decade's delay, Swire Properties' first project in Guangdong province, Taikoo Hui, is heading towards completion.
Located in Guangdong's capital of Guangzhou, it is the company's first mixed-use project on the mainland to be developed by Swire itself and will be declared open by the end of September and fully operational next year.
It comprises a hotel, offices, shopping mall and a cultural centre. A few shops are already trading, and all the retail space plus 60 per cent of the office space has been let. Michael Grimshaw, associate director of Arquitectonica, the US architecture firm that designed Taikoo Hui, likened it to Swire's Pacific Place and Festival Walk projects in Hong Kong.
At a recent seminar in Guangzhou organised by Arquitectonica, he was asked by Richard Carswell, an American with 20 years construction experience: 'Why did the project take 10 years? That will kill any American developer.'
Referring to Swire, one of Hong Kong's oldest British companies. Grimshaw replied: 'We Brits got stamina.'
Taikoo Hui failed to meet its completion deadline of 2008 after the project was hit by a corruption scandal linked to Swire's former mainland partner, Guangzhou Daily Group. The two companies had signed an agreement in 2002 to develop Taikoo Hui with a total investment of four billion yuan (HK$4.8 billion).
Later that same year, Guangzhou Daily chief editor He Xiangqin and the Guangzhou Daily Group's president Li Yuanjiang were detained in a corruption investigation. In 2003, Swire chairman James Hughes-Hallett told Hong Kong media that the project's completion was delayed till 2008 due to 'partnership issues'.
