The owner of Bruce Lee’s former mansion will begin demolishing the kung fu legend’s old home in two weeks to make way for a Chinese studies centre, the <i>South China Morning Post</i> learned on Friday.
The plan marks a departure for the charitable trust that owns the building at 41 Cumberland Road, Kowloon, and had pledged to keep it intact and improve it.
Joey Lee Man-lung, vice-chairman of the management committee of Yu Panglin Charitable Trust, said structural problems had been discovered in the building that made maintaining it unfeasible. He said a colourful mosaic left by Bruce Lee would be kept on the wall outside the mansion – as would four window frames in the two-storey building.
The demolition and redevelopment of the mansion was expected to be finished by the end of next year. The Yu Panglin Charitable Trust was founded by billionaire philanthropist Yu Pang-lin who died in 2015.
Wong Yiu-keung, chairman of the Bruce Lee Club, had called for the building to be turned into a museum since 2008. He said on Friday he was disappointed the mansion would be torn down.
“I think fans of Bruce Lee around the world are disappointed with the news of the imminent demolition of the building,” Wong said.
The window frames, which were in the mansion when Bruce Lee lived there, would be installed in the new building, according to Joey Lee. He said the construction company hired for the renovation had found the building’s structural problems in November.
The trust then hired a consultant to examine the two-storey building where the US-born martial arts master spent his last years with his family.
The consultant’s appraisal, carried out this year, found that concrete spalling had deteriorated a large number of reinforced concrete beams. The report described the condition of the concrete as “extremely bad”.
“Based on the condition surveys carried out, it was revealed that the conditions of the existing building had been deteriorated severely,” the report said.
Photos taken by the consultant mansion showed metal bars set up to support sections of the mansion’s interior.
Based on the consultant’s assessment, Joey Lee estimated that renovating and repairing the 5,699 square feet property would cost about HK$20 million (79 million baht), similar to the cost of demolishing the building and erecting a new one.
“We plan to run a centre that provides courses like Mandarin and Chinese music for children, so safety must come first. Therefore, we made the difficult decision to demolish the building and build a new building from scratch on the site,” he said.
Reporters for the South China Morning Post on Friday observed that scaffolding had been erected outside the mansion.
The Buildings Department granted approval for the demolition last month and the work was expected to start in the next two weeks, Joey Lee said.
Bruce Lee lived in Hong Kong as a child before returning to the United States, where he was born, at the age of 18. He taught martial arts and starred in many films, rising to global stardom.
He spent his last years with his family in the Kowloon mansion before his sudden death on July 20, 1973, at the age of 32.
Yu Pang-lin bought the house in 1974 for about HK$1 million. At one point, according to historians, the house was used as a short-stay love hotel.
Yu had planned to sell it in 2008 to raise funds for victims of the Sichuan earthquake, but he dropped the idea when fans urged him to preserve the property and restore it. Bruce Lee affectionately called the mansion The Crane’s Nest.
Wong, of the Bruce Lee fan organisation, called the news a blow to local heritage.
“Bruce Lee embodied the spirit of Hong Kong,” Wong said. “It’s a shame our city fails to retain his former residence.”
