Bad news for Bruce fans... There have been talks and plans to build a Bruce Lee museum in Hong Kong for quite a while now. Unfortunately, it's going to be a little while longer before that happens. The plans have hit a snag again: Plan for Bruce Lee museum in Hong Kong stalls.The proposed museum site, Bruce lee's former house at 41 Cumberland Road, is currently being used as an hourly love motel. Alas, after a great deal of fanfare about museum plans a few years back, negotiations between the Hong Kong government and the owner of the property have apparently fallen apart:
Philanthropist Yu Panglin, a self-professed Bruce Lee fan who currently owns the property, offered to donate the house to the Hong Kong government in 2008.It's his property, and he has the right to do what he wants with it. But you can bet that a lot of Bruce Lee fans are pretty mad at Mr. Yu Panglin. In the meantime, you can make plans to visit a commemorative exhibition at the Hong Kong Heritage Museum in July 2013, the 40th anniversary of Bruce Lee's death. More here: Plans to turn Bruce Lee's home into a museum foiled.
His condition: the two-story property should be expanded to include a library, a cinema and a martial arts training center.
This would entail building three more floors to accommodate the new facilities, a condition that was not approved by the Town Planning Board in an area that is dominated by low-rise residential buildings.
Initial announcements of a possible Bruce Lee museum at the site were met with much excitement from the public. Last year, the government held a competition calling for ideas for restoring the residence.
It attracted 140 entries from around the globe, and winning entries were publicly exhibited in Hong Kong.
Needless to say, the failed negotiations caused a fair bit of mud-slinging among the parties involved—some of it directed at landowner Yu.