Exhibition News
- Hong Kong expands major exhibition center in face of regional competition
Date: 28-Sep-2007 Sources: (People's Daily)
Hong Kong government officials and industry representatives inaugurated a new phase Thursday in an ambitious project aimed at expanding the city's major exhibition center in face of growing regional competition.
The 1.4 billion-HK-dollar project, when completed by early 2009, is expected to add 20,000 square meters, or 40 percent, exhibition space to the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center, a facility renowned for its winged shape on the Victoria Harbor.
Four sets of steel structure stretching over 100 meters, the longest of its kind ever used for a building in Hong Kong, will be installed in the project.
The exhibition center first opened in 1988 at the cost of 1.6 billion HK dollars and underwent a major expansion in the 1990s, costing an additional 4.8 billion HK dollars.
The ongoing expansion, launched in 2006, would increase the facility's exhibition area to around 66,000 square meters and enable at least five of Hong Kong's leading fairs -- the electronics, gifts, toys, jewelry and lighting shows -- to grow, possibly to become the largest of their kind in the world, said Peter Woo, Chairman of the Hong Kong Trade Development Council at the ceremony Thursday.
The expansion would be achieved without reclamation and almost entirely within the facility's existing space, Woo said, adding that the project would mean increased expenditure, more visitors and new jobs to the economy.
Woo said the project was only an interim measure and that the Trade Development Council has been examining the possibility of further expansion.
'Any international trade fair must be at least 100,000 square meters to attain the necessary critical mass to survive,' he said, 'If you are not able to join the so called 'One Million S.F. Club', you will probably be out of the competition.'
Hong Kong's exhibition industry is facing increasing challenges from neighboring cities, where more than 900,000 square meters of exhibition and convention facilities have come on stream in the past three years.
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