Since we were running out of time to find an apartment we continued house-hunting the next weekend and broadened the search to include the major local agents. We stayed in a hotel in Shatin on Saturday night so we could spend the whole weekend looking.
One agent strongly recommended 'The Palazzo' (below). This was built in 2009 with a design concept inspired by Florentine Palaces and feels a bit like 'The Venetian' in Macau. Like the Venetian, the design, materials and workmanship are all first-rate, and the aesthetic genuinely tasteful. Or as tasteful as you can be within the constraints of being totally over-the-top and inherently fake.
The marketing material says "The Romans built a great empire some two thousand years ago. Nowdays, here an extravagant palace, The Palazzo, is where the classics meet".
The Palazzo is famous for its enormous clubhouse, which is truly merits the adjective 'palatial'.
"The Palazzo Derby Clubhouse is covering about 220,000 sq. meters in addition to the area of landscaped garden and costing about 1 billion dollars for construction, is designed by renowned Hirch Bender Associates (L.A.)... Bliss coheres with lavishness in such a perfect way in The Palazzo".
The indoor pool and roman baths (upper left).
Outdoor swimming pool. Plenty of statues for those who might miss Parkview.
The ten 50 story towers contain 1,300 apartments.
The views from our favorite apartment on the 50th floor. Looking across the river...
...and across the racecourse to MaOnShan and Tolo harbour (below). "The Palazzo is located in the prestigious area... and has imposing views across Shing Mun River, Tolo Harbour... the backdrop is so immaculate for the eyes to behold."
The clubhouse from above.
Now you can see the catch. The development is right next to the motor-way and the clubhouse and gardens are squeezed into a thin strip of land between the motorway and the towers of the older Jubilee Gardens development (which incidentally has no gardens).
Compared with Royal Ascot the podium is narrow and hemmed in by towers so it doesn't catch the breeze. Overall the air doesn't feel very fresh.
This reminds me of Disneyland in L.A.
I don't think we are imagining the air quality issues. Both weekends we went house hunting in Fo Tan Rika and I got sore throats, even though the air is measured to be much better than say, Causeway Bay or Kowloon.
A quick check on the web confirmed that you really dont want your child growing up too close to a motorway if you can avoid it:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/jan/26/pollution.transportintheuk
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(07)60037-3/abstract
video: view from The Palazzo
View of the clubhouse from the other side of the motorway. A railway depo is underneath.
Although the clubhouse is huge and has kids rooms and bowling alley, there facilities somehow feel crowded. The main indoor pool is only 20m and 3 lanes, while the outdoor pool was very crowded when we visited. Basically looks great but not so practical. So bottom line, although we rather liked the 50F apartment we saw, we ruled out The Palazzo on grounds of air quality and facilities.
So on Sunday, feeling rather desperate, we started visiting the offices of the other local agents. This is Rika at Ricacorp.
Hannah was very patient and well behaved, although it must have been pretty boring for her. We tried to reward her in various ways, and not just ice-cream.
We quickly got a bigger an much more reasonably priced selection compared with the apartments we had seen through my company's agent and the Japanese agent Rika had tried.
We wre able to see a selection of the larger flats on the east side of Royal Ascot, which we found to be great but too noisy and too close to the road.
Apartment visit number 25. Nice and big but too noisy.
Our favorite place was The Grandville which is a lovely recent development up the hill. It has terrific Feng Shui and just feels really nice to be in. The clubhouse is very family friendly, has a sensible balance of useful facilities including kids rooms. It is also on the bus route to Hannah's new school and has shuttle busses to the Fo Tan MTR station and shopping center in Shatin.
This photo above shows the view from The Grandville looking down to Royal Ascott. Unfortunately the apartments we saw were just a little to small (900 sq ft) for all our stuff, and while it has are a few larger units in our price range none are currently available.
And the photo below shows a view of The Grandville (the brick colored towers) from the bedroom of the apartment we eventually chose at Royal Ascot. Rika will be able to gaze longingly out the window at it and plot her move to one of the larger apartments in a years time.
This apartment is on the west side of Royal Ascot so it is further from the motorway and faces away from the noise. Because it is so high it is quiet enough to open the windows and a catch a breeze, (although we are still planning to buy air purifiers to scrub the air). Like all the apartments on this side it is just a little smaller than we'd like (1000 sq ft), but it is 40% cheaper than our current apartment.
View from the living room, looking south past Jubilee Gardens (in scaffolding) and The Palazzo is appropriately peeking 'over the top'. The green and paved area in front of Jubilee Gardens is the roof of the shopping mall which also serves as a park and picnic area for Royal Ascot residents. And you can see the 50m pool.
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