The Harbour Plaza Resort City hotel may soon become a pair of residential towers
Hong Kong’s CK Asset Holdings could be on its way to turning the Harbour Plaza Resort City hotel in the New Territories into a HK$14 billion ($1.78 billion) housing and retail project, having on 7 June submitted an application to the city’s Town Planning Board to convert the hospitality property into 1,102 new homes.
The hotel-to-residential conversion would align with the government’s policy to “increase housing land supply by contributing to the immediate provision of residential units in a short time frame and (encourage more families to become homeowners),” said the developer in its planning application published this month.
The development flagship of magnate Li Ka-Shing is submitting a second planning application in less than four years for the site on 18 Tin Yan Road in Tin Shui Wai, after having applied to redevelop that site into 5,000 residential units in December of 2018.
Should it win government approval for the hotel-to-housing conversion plan, the developer would be set to turn the 23-year-old hospitality property into a pair of 24-storey residential towers with a retail podium, spanning a combined 1.16 million square feet (107,767 square metres) in gross floor area.
Tin Shui Wai Supply
CK Asset’s latest planning application provides another development option for the Tin Shui Wai project, said a company representative when contacted by Mingtiandi. Upon completion, the residential portion of that proposed project could be worth as much as HK$6.5 billion, said Alex Leung, senior director at CHFT Advisory and Appraisal.
CK Asset chairman and managing director Victor Li
If the developer succeeds in converting the Harbour Plaza Resort City hotel into new apartments, units could cover from 388 to 409 square feet of saleable area, with each one selling for around HK$5.8 million once the conversion is completed, said Leung.
In comparison, homes at Sun Hung Kai Properties’ Wetland Seasons Bay residential project in Tin Shui Wai have sold for an average of HK$16,100 per square foot since pre-sales began in August of last year, said Nelson Wong, head of research at JLL in Greater China, who cited data from the Economic Property Research Centre (EPRC).
CK Asset’s latest development proposal would shrink the project’s gross floor area by 42 percent from the 2 million square feet of area outlined in its previous plan. That earlier application was approved in December of 2020, and will remain valid until the same month in 2024, subject to conditions including the submission of a revised Landscape Master Plan as well as other revised assessments.
CK Asset’s downsized application comes as the number of homes sold across Hong Kong during the second quarter is expected to decline 32 percent year-on-year to 14,900 transactions, according to Cushman & Wakefield’s latest residential report.
The consultancy expects the count of residential transactions in the city to decline by 20 to 25 percent in 2022 compared to last year, while home prices are projected to grow by no more than 3 percent over the period.
Residential Pipeline
The Tin Shui Wai project provides Hong Kong’s second-largest developer by market capitalisation a fresh opportunity to fortify its residential project pipeline, following its March acquisition of a housing site in Kowloon’s To Kwa Wan through an Urban Renewal Authority tender for HK$5.99 billion.
About four months before that acquisition, CK Asset had applied to rezone the East Fo Tan Industrial Area in the New Territories into a 3.15 million square foot residential and retail project.
The company’s completed projects have also enjoyed some sales success this year, with an unnamed buyer this month having agreed to pay HK$270.6 million for a 20th-floor apartment at CK Asset’s 21 Borrett Road luxury residential project. That deal for the Hong Kong Island luxury flat set a new record price of HK$91,895 per square foot for a non-penthouse unit at the property.
Homes at that Mid-Levels project have continued to sell this year despite the city’s COVID-led economic slowdown, with a pair of buyers having paid a combined HK$393.9 million to acquire two units on the 21st floor at the project last month.
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