Park City is caught in a vortex

Ho Chi Minh City’s People Committee in early October received a proposal from Park City Joint Stock Company - developer of Park City project in Binh Chanh district, to extract four hectares from the project’s 11.72ha commercial area to develop residential properties.

Nguyen Quoc Dung, director of Park City, told VIR: “Due to the characters of a community entertainment park project together with long land clearance work, we will be hardly able to refund the project’s investment capital within the licenced time. The addition of residential properties to the project is to hopefully solve the problem that has prevented local people from making use of the entertainment facilities in the area.”

He said the project originally included a residential development function which was taken out by mistake in 2008 when the investor re-registered investment licence in line with the Decree 101/2006/ND-CP dated on December 21, 2006.

“Actually, we have just recently asked for restoring the residential part in the investment licence,” he said.

Ho Chi Minh City authorities have agreed with the proposal on the condition that the proposed residential developments will be located on the top of the approved commercial complex. The city’s move is to accelerate the project’s progress, which has so far just seen some 23 per cent of the total area cleared.

However, some relocated residents at the project area have claimed that the investor is trying to change the project in its favour, so that the compensated land prices given to them earlier were unreasonable. Some of the existing and relocated residents have even sent documents to the related authorities questioning the project’s idle land status and asking for the additional land clearance fees.

Vo Van Hue, whose land had been compensated with VND2.8 million ($144) per square metre in 2007, said in his document sent to the city’s authorities and press members that “he agreed with the compensation fee with the hope that the project would be soon constructed for the sake of all the people in the area. However, Park City has not only failed to develop the project on time as promised, but also now try to completely change the project’s function to commercial and residential developments.”

“I feel like I have been cheated,” said Hue.

“We have still kept the main function of the Park City project as being approved. The additional residential properties will be just applicable in the approved commercial area only,” Dung said, adding that though the local authorities of Binh Chanh district were fully in charge of land clearance work in accordance with the approved agricultural land compensation level between VND200,000 and VND375,000 ($10-$19), the investor would be willing to negotiate with each resident to speed-up land clearance work in the coming time.

Tran Duy Canh, lawyer at Luat Viet law firm, said: “As the original investment licence of the project saw the function of residential developments, it is now just the matter of administrative work for the investor to ask the city’s authorities for bringing it back on the license. This is lawful.”

Regarding the residents’ recent claim, Canh said: “For those relocated residents having received land compensation fee, they now have no way to get additional fees for the land from Park City, otherwise they had previous agreements with the investor for that.”

According to Park City’s investment licence amended on February 26, 2009, the project with the total investment of $310 million and a lifespan of 50 years will cover 50.3ha at Binh Hung ward, Binh Chanh district. Beside the commercial area of 11.72ha, the project will have 28.1ha of entertainment park and 7.03ha for traffic infrastructure.

Park City is a joint between Saigon Entertainment Park Holding, Indochina Park City Holding 2 and Indochina Park City Holding 3. The project was originally developed by local South Saigon Development Corporation and Singaporean Saigon Entertainment Park Holding with the investment licence obtained in December 26, 1998.