And yet, here we are - Lamma remains one of the most largely underdeveloped islands in the SAR. The community here has by and large succeeded in slowing rampant housing development. Thanks. Seriously. Thanks.

So, who's up to meet to put together a few counter-proposals?

We've got about a month to go until the planning meeting on May 3. If we submit our proposals a week early, it'll give them some time to mull them over and us some time to put together a couple more to put on the table at the meeting.

I'm free Sunday and most of next week.

Did you have a look at the counter-proposals mentioned in this forum over the years and in the Lamma-zine, some in considerable detail, some promoted prominently in the media and all totally ignored by the Govt. so far:

Lamma Eden, Amusement Park, Meditation Park, Eco-Park, YMCA Wonderland camp expansion, etc.?

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In Sunday Post today, Apr 6, 2014:
Lamma Island divided over resort plan that will double number of residents

The article quotes a few YSW residents who oppose it, mostly Chinese for a change. And then quote SKW restaurateurs who think it will be a "boon".

Interesting that the Post calls it a "resort" rather than a "housing project".
"Resort"? Bollocks. But it wouldn't be "housing" either. Just a sinkhole for govt funds and then speculators would buy and then try to flip flats in an out of the way location.


There's also a video there with 4 min of interviews.

The SKW guy talks about how they only have a doctor there 2 days a week and how this would bring a better medical service.

FFS. The govt spends tens of millions on helipads and tens of thousands on each trip because they won't have a full time medical service here or at SKW.

Instead of spending a few hundred thousand a year on full time qualified medical staff, they only offer it as a side effect of a billion dollar project.
More like blackmail -- withholding medical services (that would cost less than the heli-evacs) unless we let them build this thing.

Click for Objections to the development of the Ex-Lamma Quarry Area at Sok Kwu Wan.

Please have a good look at the quarry project info boards near the 7th Avenue bar area on YSW Main Street, just before the public toilet, see below.

Send your comments ASAP and register before Apr 25 for the only Public Forum, on May 3 in City Hall, HK Island, just beyond the Star Ferry Pier:
http://www.ex-lammaquarry.hk/eng-PublicEngagement2.htm

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Submitted by ARUP the ex-Lamma Quarry consultants:

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Is there any group of Lamma residents involved in all this planning? Architects, Designers, Engineers, local Farmers and Fisherman?

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FUTURE PROJECT BY ASMUS | LAMMA 2020

Not that we are aware of.

It's all planned as a standard new HK town/suburb, driven by CEDD with international consulting engineers ARUP, with only a minimal, nominal "advisory" input by a handful of indigenous SKW politicians, fishermen and stakeholders.

But I could be wrong and it would be a good idea to ask them directly at the bilingual public forum on May 3 (everybody welcome) - registration form - or the more secretive "Focus Group Meeting" on Apr 23 (by invitation only, I might be going even though the outcome is kind of a foregone conclusion).

The ex-Lamma Quarry 8-page leaflet has been mailed a few days ago to all Lamma households.
It's basically the same as the 2 display panels of the "Roving Exhibition", currently located near The Island Bar, also on the official website:
http://www.ex-lammaquarry.hk/eng-PublicEngagement2.htm

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Yeah, I've got that flyer as well and I saw the website and the exhibition, all the same stuff. And since ARUP is involved I thought that this is a bit more of a public decision. But guess they will go for the larger amount of households anyway if there is no public review. So I would suggest we get used to the thought of getting doubled in amount of Lamma Residents soon.
Let's start to think about the good sidekicks of this. Are there any good sidekicks however?

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FUTURE PROJECT BY ASMUS | LAMMA 2020

SKW is an hour's walk from here. Or a half hour by bike, though it's steep in parts.
You can get to Central or Aberdeen faster and much easier. So whatever they put there will be of no benefit to us.

If we did get another 5000 residents, we could vote the DAB incumbents out.

Anyway, it won't be "soon". I really doubt there will be 5000 people living there, in the next 10 years anyway.
Even if they build flats, they will be overpriced and mostly remain empty.

What's to stop expats from renting the flats? Or people for whom living on Lamma is attractive because of the cleaner air and (by that point proximity to) nature? I agree rentals on Lamma will rise even if the flats stay empty but isn't there a chance they'll be bought up by some economic class of expat? After 7 years in Western HK even a chintzy high rise in a remote location with costly ferry access might appeal to me.

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"Some say expat life is just a breeze..."

What's stopping expats renting the chintzy flats at the Tannery?
Yet no one has. They've been empty for 10 years.

No jobs, no high schools, no hospital, no medical service outside office hours, no ferries after midnight.

There are plenty of nice, clean and chintzy flats on south HK Island, and you can drive your Merc to Soho or go shopping in Causeway Bay, go walking in country parks (we have none on Lamma).

Also the ferry access is as yet undetermined. The government has refused to discuss it (and I did ask). The DB company runs their ferries, but in SKW they would be the same kind of ferries we get here, on government tender, and unless and until they had several thousand people there, they would be less frequent than here.

Of course, some people would want to live there. All depends on how much the government is willing to subsidise the infrastructure. If they want to proclaim it a success, maybe they will do a lot.

Regardless, it can only make my life worse, so I won't be cheerleading it.

There are "plenty of nice, clean and chintzy flats" on North HK Island as well, empty for many months at very high rents. My own neighbourhood, outside YSW, has numerous empty flats and they can't find tenants for many months. The landlords want 30% or more rent increases in this HK-wide market of quite stable rents and wonder that nobody takes their flats. Entire village houses have only 1 flat occupied, 2 people or one small family on one floor only, while they're building several more village houses closeby. Lamma's problem is not that we need more housing, but that the existing housing is just too expensive for the kind of people who might be attracted to our simple lifestyle, but without most of the infrastructure that almost everybody in the rest of HK takes for granted:

Currently we've only got only 8 hours/week of basic GP doctor services for all of South Lamma, 5 days - 4:30pm and Sat mornings only in North Lamma, not any kind of public or private, motorised people traffic, no shops, restaurants or services in MOST of the island and not a single outlet of any chain store or restaurant like 7-11, Wellcome, Maxim's, Starbucks, McDonald's anywhere on our island, and only irregular access only by ferries till midnight is what keeps 99+% of HKers away from living here, plus our abundance of sometimes aggressive wildlife you meet almost daily these Spring/Summer months, not a non-existent lack of housing.

There's plenty of expensive housing available here, just look at the property agency windows or ask around for many more options, but all the reasons above (and many more reasons) keep people away and only the most resistant and foolhardy (REAL Lammaites!) move out here. Only a few adapt and even less enjoy living here long-time, not moving back to town like so many newbies after a few months enduring our many so called "hardships", some of them moving out of Lamma soon in disappointment or even disgust for various reasons.

So if the Govt. really wants to attract people to live in the ex-Lamma Quarry, they'll have to provide a LOT of brand-new infrastructure to attract even a small number of public and private housing tenants in those very expensive new flats in up to 13-floor highrises. I assume that the Govt. is hell-bent on building that housing for a theoretical 5,000 people, most difficult to stop them or at least improve their plans dramatically. It's not unlikely to become another Sea Ranch ghost town or a Tin Shui Wai in 5-10 years. I hope not, what a waste of a now beautiful area that would be, I'll be watching, taking pictures and reporting from there frequently....

In the meantime, the YMCA makes great and suitable use of the area, Easter camps are in full progress right now for thousands of junior, parents and seniors from all over HK, arriving on the usually massively under-used SKW ferry, taking the boat over to the Quarry, not adding at all to the congestion of Lamma, the YSW ferry and the Family Trail on weekends:
Senior & Junior Camp Easter Edition (Apr 18-20)

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OK, Focus Group Meeting (in English) about the ex-Lamma Quarry housing development project tonight.

Got any questions I might ask there?

Bilingual public consultation on May 3:

There's a public signature campaign to turn the ex-Lamma Quarry into an Eco Theme Park, spearheaded by Lamma Corner (shop just next to Bookworm Cafe). Stop by if you'd like to sign it:

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Submitted by stanleychan2@hotmail.com:
(Email Stanley for the large pdf file)

For the Govt. housing plans, click here:
http://www.ex-lammaquarry.hk/new.html

Register for the Public Forum: http://www.ex-lammaquarry.hk/download/Registration%20Form.pdf

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Everything was said at last year's "consultations" and they completely ignored it.

Need to get their attention. Maybe you can wear one of these?

Well, it would have done no good, this project would still go ahead if we'd all been wiped out in there.

As a (more or less) neutral, self-proclaimed "reporter" and non-activist, I'd need a much more passionate topic for self-sacrifice.

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Here's a brand-new ELQ (Ex-Lamma Quarry) story from Inmedia (in Chinese only so far, anybody wants to do a quick, but better than this Google translation?:

Lamma Sim City (or Lamma Sea Ranch?), by James Wong:

http://www.inmediahk.net/Sim-City

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Attending the invitation-only, non-public Ex-Lamma Quarry Focus Group Meeting in English on Apr 23 as the only (?) North Lamma resident (with less than a handful of actual South Lamma residents), here are some of my notes, also based on private, frank discussions with some attendees on the Govt. side afterwards.

Re: the Lamma Eden idea promoted in this forum above, the SCMP and some other media:
Nobody ever mentioned this or any alternate options in the sometimes frank and quite heated exchanges. Any alternatives are not being considered at all by any of the planners or Govt., housing is fully supported all the way to the very top officials of the SAR.

It'll all be housing, housing, with a little window dressing of watersports in the lake, a little "recreation area", a recreation hotel. No watersports in the bay (too dangerous), just in the lake. NO public housing, just a few Home Ownership flats.

No marina anymore, after local objections from the fish farmers. So the Baroque project stands a slightly better chance when reapplying to the Town Planning Board the not-too-distant future. The objections of ferries being too expensive for public housing tenants basically killed that former idea still supported in the Phase I consultations. A few other small changes, like the in-site layouts and external roads, but nothing major I could spot.

Environmental concerns from birdwatchers and off-island green groups were addressed solely with "mitigation measures" during construction in this "low-quality, brown-site environment of little ecological value with just very few protected species". Very critical comments from the two South Lamma Concern Group members, the HK Institute of Urban Design, the YMCA seniors, plus Prof. Rebecca Chiu, former LegCo and Town Planning Board member.

The current exclusive tenant of the entire ELQ, the YMCA was there in full force (5?), but couldn't add a lot to the foregone-conclusion discussions besides something like, "We and the children love this area and its wildlife and we're making fine use of it all right now." They're hoping for just a few years extension of their exclusive lease which is ending this year, but almost seem resigned to having to move out in a few years the very latest?

The Govt. and South Lamma Powers-that-be are (North Lamma powers still making up their minds, seemingly pressuring for better public services before agreeing?) hell-bent on making this housing development happen. It would take MAJOR public opposition to stop it, but I don't see that happening anywhere yet, for many reasons. The planners were eager to dispel the frequently expressed opinion of Lamma DbAY or Park Island, but weren't successful with most of the participants. Many worries about it becoming another massive failure like Lantau Sea Ranch were expressed as well, but also shrugged off by the various Govt. reps and their consultants.

In the meantime, Village House building has started again all over South Lamma in anticipation of the crowds of construction workers moving in soon; rents still dramatically increasing down there right now, according to local residents. Building permits seem to be handed out in bunches all over North and South Lamma right now, including surrounding my new Pak Kok home and the newly-founded, future 50-house village Tai Wan Nam, just off Power Station beach.

It'll be a major challenge to find a private developer to construct this new town and the Govt. will have to guarantee to promise to pay for all the many hundreds of millions of $s of new infrastructure first before a (probably exclusive, like dBay) developer would agree to build this new town.

Move-in date for tenants in the ELQ in 2021, but expect many years till they reach more than a few hundred, not investment-only permanent residents and all the new infrastructure of this new town/suburb will be up and running (fire station, library, clinic, waste removal, shopping centre, hotel, recreational/watersports, more regular ferries, etc.) In the meantime, all the current many reasons for Lamma's population growing less than the overall HK population - 1%/year over the last 10 years - still apply and might likely prevent people from ever moving to the ELQ.

Lamma Sea Ranch instead of the current YMCA camp/recreation site or a proposed Lamma Eden or recreational/touristic uses?

These were just a few quick notes, discuss in this ELQ forum and in the "Oppose the development in South Lamma... Facebook group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/202469039792385

I hope to see some of you in the Public Consultation Forum (Cantonese-with-simultaneous-translation) this Sat morning, May 3 in City Hall, just beyond the Star Ferry Pier?
http://www.ex-lammaquarry.hk/eng-PublicEngagement2.htm

The Lamma-zine will be there and will continue reporting over the ELQ building years, I hope
(at least till Lamma's current and future economic realities will catch up with it again and perhaps put it out of business for good).

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As I expected. If I'd gone I would have just blown up at those hypocritical assholes.
They're going spend a billion dollars, build a bunch of flats to sell to investors, while CY will make speeches saying they're building homes for HK people. Meanwhile all the people who live here now will be forced to pay double rents or just move out to some dump in Kowloon.

Hi Lamma-Gung, i'm the guy who translate the Bobby Li article before. This time, i would translate the Inmedia article for you cause it bring up some interesting and useful point that we didn't know.

Few things you need to know first.
First of all, the writer of this article is Damon Wong (https://www.facebook.com/eg9515?fref=ts) not James Wong.
Second, i won't do a full translation cause it's too long. I only translate the data that is interesting and useful in this article.
Third, my translation is not 100% correct and it's base on my understand of this article.
Last, i'm not a native English speaker and writer, so please accept my poor English.

And the content start now:

According to current information, the government propose 1,200 private housing with size 700 to 1,000 square feet. We suppose it's for residential use but the fact shows that it may become a chance for real estate flipping. According to Rating and Valuating Department statistic in 2012, Housing Vacancy Rate of 700 to 1,000 square feet private house is 6.1% which is higher that small size private house (<400 square feet: 2.3%, 400-700 square feet: 4.1%). Also, the project may not apply "flats with limited floor areas(限呎)" policy. The size may be larger than 1,000 square feet and it 's Housing Vacancy Rate is 10.7% in 2012.

For subsidized housing, it's a big question for both young and old people move in Lamma Island. The lack of caring service (Retirement home)and emergency service (Hospital) are the major concerns of old people. For the young people, the adaptation of natural environment, traffic and local society would be a big issue.

To conclude, development and planing are not like playing "Sim City". It should be slower and step by step, give more time for communication and adaptation.
(in case you don't know what is Sim City )