2020 Vision Building Project received Broad Media Coverage

Chinese Media - 

Sing Tao Daily News  (15 March 2013)

Kingdom Revival Times (15 March 2013) 

Christian Weekly (22 March 2013)  

Christian Times (24 March 2013) 

Hong Kong Daily News (5 April 2013) 

English Media - 

South China Morning Post (15 March 2013, pg. C4) 

HISTORIC CHURCH TO OPEN NEW CENTRE 

by Joyce Ng

St Andrew's Church's new annexe fronting Nathan Road will open its doors to the public next year, the church says. 

Introducing the project at a press conference yesterday, the Anglican church's vicar Reverend John Menear said the "Life Centre" would increase the church's capacity and impact on the community. 

"At street level, it will allow people to step in and use the facilities [and] we'll be able to go down, like an underground church," he said. 

The centre, which is being built by digging into the raised ground on which the church stands, will come with an 850-seat [note: should be 830-seat] auditorium, an amphiteatre, a coffee shop, a bookshop and space for activities. The premises will be open for community meetings but not for commercial use, the vicar said. 

The 1906 church, [one of] the oldest church in Kowloon, is a proposed grade-one historic site. 

The project has met with reservations in the Antiquities Advisory Board because it involved demolishing two-thirds of the church's landmark stone wall. Board members said the wall was one of the last traces of old Nathan Road. 

But project architect Nelson Chen said that the site was the only one available that was of sufficient size for the new centre. "Heritage conservation is not keeping everything intact. It is the art of managing change", he said.