《TAIPEI TIMES 焦點》 City to ask Dome backers to take over

SECOND CHANCE? The Environment Review Commission ruled that Farglory Group should resubmit evacuation plans for the Dome site, as it had underestimated risks

By Abraham Gerber / Staff reporter

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The Taipei City Government will ask the Taipei Dome’s financial backers to take over the project from Farglory Group （遠雄集團）, a city official said yesterday.

“The city government would look upon it favorably if the financing banks would pour their energy into completing the remaining work,” Taipei Deputy Mayor Teng Chia-chi （鄧家基） said.

Monday marked the conclusion of a contractual grace period for Farglory to complete the Dome complex after its construction deadline expired in March.

According to the city’s contract with the group, the city government could also have chosen to grant a deadline extension, with suspending or dissolving the contract itself another option.

Teng reiterated that the primary consideration behind the city’s decision was guaranteeing public safety, followed by maximizing the public benefit of the build-operate-transfer （BOT） project.

The city and the group have been locked in conflict over contract terms and site safety since January.

When asked how much banks could expect to pay if they took over the project, Teng said that based on the city’s estimates, total financing for the project by the end of last year came to NT$16.5 billion （US$528 million）, including both bank and Farglory funds.

He refused to comment on whether banks had expressed an interest in taking over site management, adding that the city government had yet to open discussions.

Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je （柯文哲） said the city would “explain” and “discuss” the “present situation” of the project with banks, denying that the city was ordering any institutions to take over.

“According to the contract, there are many areas where it is not just whatever we say goes,” Ko said. “We have a responsibility to communicate beforehand with the banks.”

He added that the city still expects Farglory to complete work on the Dome’s foundations by the end of next month as scheduled.

“This is called corporate social responsibility — you cannot just start construction and then keep everyone on tenterhooks,” he said.

Both the city and Farglory have said that the Dome complex will be structurally unstable until its foundations are completed, potentially endangering the Taipei MRT Bannan Line and other nearby structures.

According to the firm’s contract, any bank takeover would be temporary, with the city deciding whether to dissolve the contract if the complex remains uncompleted after six months.

Taipei City’s Environment Review Commission yesterday ruled that Farglory should be required to resubmit evacuation plans for the Dome site.

Following oral reports by Farglory and the city’s Department of Urban Development, the commission ruled that Farglory had clearly underestimated site evacuation risks, ordering the firm to provide an explanation of what measures it would take to evacuate the site in the event of an earthquake or electricity outage.

The commission also ordered evacuation plans to be re-evaluated in light of seven safety standards used in site evacuation simulations conducted by a city safety commission in April.

One of the safety standards — requiring use of particular simulation software — was dropped by the department in its report to the commission.

Controversy over the Dome’s safety was sparked after the safety commission recommended that either the Dome itself or a neighboring shopping mall be torn down to open up evacuation space.

The review commission also recommended that site use be restricted or lowered to help raise safety standards.

At the commission meeting, Dome architect Stan Lo （羅興華） continued to take issue with the “reasonableness” of the city’s standards, but said the firm would be willing to use them to run additional evacuation simulations.

新聞來源：TAIPEI TIMES