Alarm at the sound of one hand upsizing
PAUL BIBBY URBAN AFFAIRS
November 14, 2009
A living tradition of kung fu ... the abbot of the Shaolin Temple in China, Shi Yong Xin, with Shi Yankuo striking a pose. Photo: Sylvia Liber
THE Shaolin monks of central China are not known for their work as property developers. Incredible kung fu feats depicted in dubbed Hollywood movies are their main claim to fame.
So it came as a surprise when the monks announced in 2006 that they were buying a 1248-hectare paddock in South Nowra.
The site was going to become a Shaolin village, where 150,000 tourists a year would flock to watch trainee monks put through their paces, before retiring to a luxury hotel.
But as more detail emerges about the size of the proposal, the apparent lack of financial backing and the remarkable generosity of Shoalhaven Council, some on the South Coast are asking whether the Shaolin village is a front for a residential project designed to fill the pockets of property developers.
''You don't have to look any further than their original plans,'' the former independent MP for South Coast, John Hatton, said. ''Five hundred houses for sale, plus 350 villas for elderly residents and a 27-hole golf course - does that sound like a Shaolin village? Do they really think hundreds of thousands of people will travel to the South Coast to go there?''
So blatantly out of character was the proposal, that when the monks made their first request for it to be fast-tracked as a ''state-significant site'' by the government, the then planning minister, Frank Sartor, was forced to refuse.
''There were a number of developments around the state which seemed to be Trojan horses, where, hidden behind a golf course, there were subdivisions in the order of a thousand dwellings,'' Mr Sartor said.
''In the Shaolin case I could see there was a tourist component. I invited them to bring in professional planners and architects, but the fact that it took them some time to do that made me wary.''
Mr Sartor eventually accepted the Shaolin village as a site of state significance, but not before the Department of Planning demanded that they halve the number of residential dwellings - knocking $350 million off the project's value.
A property developer, Landerer & Company, ended its association with the project soon after, and the monks appeared to flounder, failing to repay the remaining $4.75 million owed to Shoalhaven Council for the purchase of the land.
It was only the generosity of the council - granting the monks a repayment scheme with a 3.25 per cent interest rate - that prevented the development from falling over.
The co-director of the Shaolin Temple Foundation, Patrick Pang, conceded that the project still lacked major financial backing, but said it deserved community support.
''There is a misconception about the residential thing,'' he said. ''We were told by the tourism authority that the project would not work just as a tourism development - that it needed a residential component to be viable. Once this is built people will come from all over the world.''
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