Farglory Dome scandal? 50-year superficies with zero royalties questioned

Dome scandal? 50-year superficies with zero royalties questioned

The Taipei Dome is located in a prime area at the intersection of Zhongxiao East Road and Guangfu South Road in Taipei City. The site was originally the old Songshan Tobacco Factory from the Japanese colonial era, with groups of old trees, covering an area of 10.2 hectares. Outsiders roughly estimate the land market value at at least 200 billion yuan.

In the Dome contract that made Ko Wen-je sharply criticize it as too outrageous, looking through it item by item, Farglory not only changed the Dome design drawings, expanding the commercial facility area to 63%, while the sports park accounted for only 37%, and the money earned by the commercial facilities did not need to be shared back with the city government; Farglory kept it itself, with annual rent at only 1%. Not only that, once the sports park loses money, the Taipei City Government still has to take over the mess.

In 2002, then-Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou evaluated development on the grounds of building an indoor baseball stadium; in 2004, Farglory and other consortiums formed the "Taipei Dome Enterprise Alliance" and won as the best applicant for the bid; on October 3, 2006, Ma Ying-jeou and Farglory formally signed the Taipei Dome BOT contract. But this also raised doubts: Farglory obtained a 50-year superficies, was exempt from paying royalties, and could gain enormous profits from surrounding commercial facilities. What the Ma city government signed was an unequal contract.

During this period, the Taipei Dome went through five environmental impact assessments and was repeatedly rejected, until 2011, during the term of Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin, when it was conditionally approved. In the future it will serve as the opening venue for the 2017 Universiade.