Hong Kong's airport operator is inviting international tenders for the development of a retail-hotel-office hub that would be the largest of its kind in the Hong Kong, Kowloon and New Territories region. Known as the Skycity, the project will be developed on a 25-hectare site, about two-thirds the size of Hong Kong's major shopping hub of Causeway Bay. Skycity will be built in the north of the territory's Lantau island where the airport is based.
The first phase of the project comprises a hotel with 450--750 rooms, expected to be completed in 2020. Retail, dining and entertainment facilities of 195,000 square meters are expected to be launched a year later.
The Hong Kong Airport Authority said it was inviting bids from "like-minded" partners for the hotel from November and other retail facilities from early 2017. Selected partners are not expected to pay a large one-off premium for the deal but rather share the gross revenue with the airport authority over a term of 50 years, it said.
Fred Lam, CEO of the authority, said one of the project's aims is to reimagine the definition of shopping malls in Hong Kong where space is limited. "Retail is just part of it," he told Nikkei Asian Review on Monday, adding that other bigger-scale entertainment facilities such as waterslides, indoor skydiving and mazes would be feasible for Skycity.