Hong Kong pier one step nearer wrecking ball

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hong Kong's high court on Friday dismissed a plea by civic activists to save a British colonial-era Hong Kong pier, meaning it will most likely be demolished.

The 54-year old Queen's Pier, a quiet harborfront site in the city's financial heart, has become a civic battleground, pitting heritage groups against a development-happy government that wants the pier removed for reclamation and roadworks.

The plea, launched by two activists, had challenged the legality of a decision by a former government official not to declare Queen's Pier a historic monument -- which would have saved it.

High Court judge Johnson Lam, who last week allowed the last-gasp appeal to take place given strong public interest, ruled that the challenge had failed.

Loy Ho, one of the activists who filed the case, said she was disappointed by the ruling but was meeting with lawyers to decide on next steps. She did not rule out a possible appeal.

"The judicial review (result) doesn't mean that we are giving up on this," she said.

The spat over the historic pier has helped raise the profile of debates over other sites in Hong Kong's older districts, some of which face imminent destruction, including a century-old street market in Central and a grand former police headquarters on Hollywood Road, now famous for its antique markets and bars.

A similar row late last year over the destruction of the Star Ferry pier on Hong Kong island was also widely watched.

"Throughout Hong Kong people are speaking up about what's happening in their neighborhood in terms of urban development, and it's all being spurred by these activities around Queen's Pier and Star Ferry," harbor campaigner Paul Zimmerman said.

A months-long saga to save the Queen's Pier reached boiling point last week, when hundreds of police forcibly evicted a band of activists and hunger strikers who had camped out at the stark, pillared structure for months.

A panel of experts on the Antiquities Advisory Board in May judged the pier to be a Grade 1 historic building, defined as being of "outstanding merit" which should be preserved at all costs -- a view ignored by the government.

The activists' lawyer, Martin Lee, called this a "massive U-turn" during a court hearing on Tuesday and said the government was "belittling" its importance as a vestige of colonial rule and as a landing point for six British governors and Queen Elizabeth II in 1975.

Hong Kong reverted from British to Chinese rule 10 years ago.

Government lawyer Benjamin Yu had earlier argued that the government wasn't legally obliged to declare any building to be a monument -- no matter what the advice of the Antiquities Advisory Board. He added that official discretion was necessary to strike a balance between conservation and development.

The government has offered to reconstruct Queen's Pier later at a new site in an apparent compromise.