Stanley is likely to lose historic building to hotel development

HONG KONG: The building at 88 Stanley Main Street, home to The Boathouse restaurant, may be bulldozed to make way for a hotel development.

The owner of the blue building on the waterfront, Dolphin Bay Trading, controlled by a foreign private equity fund, has appointed property agency Colliers International to sell the 62-year-old site.

The sale will be by way of tender, with a minimum bid price of HK$68 million (RM27.09 million). The tender will close on Oct 29.

The owner bought the three-storey building for HK$27.5 million in 1995, and paid about HK$10 million to convert it for hotel development.

Approval was granted in March this year by the Town Planning Board to develop a 10-storey hotel with a gross floor area of 8,355 square feet on the site. The redevelopment project could provide hotel rooms, as well as restaurants.

The nearby Stanley Oriental Hotel at 90B Stanley Main Street provides nine hotel rooms, at weekly room rates range ranging between HK$14,500 and HK$19,200.

Reeves Yan, manager of investment services at Colliers International, said the existing building had a site area of 949 sq ft and a gross floor area — or developed space — of about 1,589 sq ft.

The building has been leased to The Boathouse for restaurant operations since 1995. In May this year the restaurant renewed its lease for a further two years at a rate of HK$170,000 per month.

The lease expired in April 2012 and the property would be sold on an "as-is" basis with existing tenancy, the agents said. — South China Morning Post