JohnWM

On several occasions in the mid-00's, I visited Hong Kong and stayed at the New World Kowloon, previously the Renaissance Kowloon. The hotel was located on Salisbury Road, immediately behind the Intercontinental.

I heard that the site of the hotel had been slated for demolition in 2010.

Is there anyone now on the ground in HK who has further word about this location? Has demolition actually occured? Is a new hotel contemplated? condo apartments? a shopping center?

Thanks in advance. I am curious as to what happened to a delightful hotel where I truly enjoyed staying.

ChrisLi

Wirelessly posted (iPhone 4: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

The hotel is now a goner. Only IC Hong Kobg remains now out of the whole complex.

All the buildings are already scrapped as the land license of that particular site is pretty unrestricted, hence a perfect site to redevelope into another sky scrapper

JohnWM

Thanks very much, ChrisLi, for the update. Ahh, time now to look for another hotel for my visit next year.

ChrisLi

Indeed ...

If you are a Marriott guy you end up the super cheap (and far) choice of Marriott SkyCity and Courtyard, or super expensive @ JW Marriott / Ren HarborView ....

If you are not sticky to any program there's quite a bit of choice, just that nothing is cheap ......

allset2travel

This former (or ex) Ren Kln was my favorite hotel. Always got good service and upgrade. Love the Location, location, location! Any words about what sort of buildings are being built?
SkyCity is not that cheap (certainly cheaper than JW & Ren HV), but as a Cat 4 property makes it perfect to unload e-certs for free nights.

rkkwan

63-storey hotel/commercial building with 3 basement levels. Probably similar to K11, also owned by New World Development, since it is approved for about the same overall height. 265m for new NWC vs 250m for K11.

Maybe we'll see a Park Hyatt on the top floors of it.

allset2travel

K11 is a pretty cool mall.
I will miss the Ren, for good.

rkkwan

For a local, there's really nothing special for us about the new medium sized malls like K11, iSquare or The One. If there's a special restaurant or store we have to go, we go; but I'm not going to say "Oh, let's check out 'K11' ".

We're mostly sterilized by all the shopping centers. Unlike when New World Centre first opened. In fact, these days, locals don't even go to the TST Promenade/Avenue of the Stars. I was there like almost EVERY weekend in the 80's.

JohnWM

Several months have passed since I originally posted this query.

Time now for an update: has construction yet started on the site of the former New World (Renaissance) Kowloon? Are any plans definite and being made public?

Thanks much.

sing-along

I had stayed at the Intercontinental last month (February 2013). I too have stayed at the New Gold Renaissance and enjoyed it very much. I also enjoy the Intercontinental as well.

Nothing has started as of yet.

Cheers

Pickles

Not to mention that those three malls in particular are incredibly poorly designed, aiming at maximizing the retail space and minimizing the common areas, which means they are a basically an unpleasant vertical labyrinth. The worst of them all is The One, where somebody had the brilliant idea of stuffing a movie multiplex in there, but the footprint is so narrow that each theater is in a different floor. Which means it takes you half hour to get to the ticket counter from the ground floor, and another half hour to find your theater once you've bought your ticket.

I hate malls, even though I live in one and I work in one. Still hate them.

rkkwan

Don't get me started about The One. I had to get some gift certificate from Haagen-Dazs. Took over 5 minutes via various escalators and lines at elevators to get there and another 5+ to get out. So much better when there were at the Hyatt Regency on Nathan Rd. Right on street front.

Letitride3c

First stayed at the New World back in the early/mid 80's and found the standard rooms to be small but it was clean & good location-wise. Then, travel agency booked us into The Kowloon and we realized how tiny hotel room can really be - all of 20 meters including the walls ...

Wasn't there a shortcut/direct access ?? ?? to the Regents' lobby for afternoon tea (IC now) via the shopping mall (but only on one of the lower level) instead of walking outside & around pass those shinny fleet of RR's & MB parked outside. I remember having dim sum on the upper level of the mall but vaguely recalled the movie theater.

Expats friend of mine (since retired) stayed in the service apartment complex and absolutely loved the harbour view when he was based in HKG & going back-n-forth to Guangzhou then.

rkkwan

Useless trivia: The public garage underneath the IC plaza for the IC and SOGO is still called the New World Centre Car Park. And still plenty of signs nearby with the New World Centre name or logo.