Hong Kong needs a big fat club – a multi-level, multi-room, multi-music venue like Singapore club titan Zouk. If they can do it, why can’t we? Rent and lack of official support for the industry, answers Zouk owner, Lincoln Cheng: “I’ve looked at the possibility of opening a Zouk in Hong Kong many times, and each time it proves impossible. The rent in Hong Kong is simply too high. While Singapore’s government embraces nightlife to bring in more tourists, and lends a hand for clubs to thrive, the government in Hong Kong treats nightlife as a vice.”

Meanwhile, Hong Kong’s nightlife cognoscenti blame lack of space in the popular areas of town and sky-high maintenance costs. “Other than a lack of space, [a club on Zouk’s] scale would be extremely difficult to maintain,” says Caroline Chow, Marketing Director of LKF Group, “Because the business is so competitive here, clubs need to be renovated often."

Each of Zouk’s five-yearly facelifts racks up bills to the tune of HK$13 million, and monthly maintenance costs Cheng HK$180,000. In comparison, Volar’s last major renovation cost proprietor Ray Ng $HK2.5 million.

With extreme overheads, and new music that threatened to alienate Singapore’s conservative party-goers, Zouk took three years just to break even. Hong Kong’s far more mercenary honchos (“The Zouk team has more of a passion for music than for dollars and cents,” Cheng claims) would never allow a floundering club to last that long. “The rent is so competitive in Hong Kong that the club has to keep going all the time,” Ng explains, “If it dies down after a while, you’re screwed.”

That was the fate of Pink, a warehouse club in Chai Wan that came up in the 1990s and Hong Kong’s last attempt to break into the mega-club mould. “It was very successful,” recalls Ng, “but then the police started cracking down. There were problems with gangs and drugs. And people stopped going.”

As a final point, Ng adds: “Clubbing culture in Hong Kong is unique. In Singapore and in other places, there isn’t the same emphasis on district. Here people like to hop around, and within walking distance.

“In Central, it would be impossible to find space for a club as big as Zouk. If you did, the rent would be millions of dollars. You could have clubs that size in TST or Mong Kok, but who goes there?”

Samantha Leese

Read the features:
Establish an art cinema on Hong Kong Island
Host mega-gigs at Hong Kong Stadium
Put a rooftop garden on top of the Museum of Art
Parks that are more fun than restrictive
Finish the TST construction works
Relax noise ordinances in bar areas
Build a super club
Ban evening traffic from Lan Kwai Fong