A project to build a third terminal at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport will have key features removed to draw contractors and get the stalled infrastructure moving, the airport’s operator said yesterday.
The terminal will no longer have a wavy ceiling that made the design team, British architectural firm Rogers Stirk Harbour+ Partners, stand out, Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport Co (TIAC) said.
In addition, 40,000 of 130,000 aluminum petal installations — which were not only decorative, but would have buffered noise and aided illumination — have been done away with, TIAC chairman Wang Ming-teh (王明德) said.
A total of 817 skylights have been canceled to make construction less coomplicated, Wang said.
The revisions came after three unsuccessful tenders since the start of last year were put forward for the planned terminal’s main building, which led to a budget increase for the project this year from NT$74.7 billion (US$2.4 billion) to NT$78.9 billion, and an extension of the construction deadline from next year to 2023.
TIAC divided the work into smaller parts to make the tenders more appealing, but without success.
In December last year, it divided the original NT$39.6 billion main building project into two parts with increased budgets — NT$34 billion for engineering work and NT$10.8 billion for electrical and mechanical work.
However, that also failed to boost interest.
The company would start building peripheral projects, including the concourse connecting boarding gates north of the terminal, Wang said.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
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