Hong Kong’s Foreign Correspondents’ Club has been granted a lease extension

Just in time for the turning of the year, the Home and Youth Affairs Bureau of the Hong Kong government has shared that the Foreign Correspondents’ Club (FCC) has been granted a three-year lease extension for its current location on Lower Albert Road in Central, a historical space it has occupied since the 1980s, the HKFP reports.

Founded in Chongqing in 1943, the FCC moved with the actions of the Chinese Civil War first to Nanjing and then Shanghai before eventually settling in Hong Kong in 1949. It has long served as a ‘home away from home’ for international journalists and correspondents who used Hong Kong as their base to cover important events happening around the region, and as a press club for local media members to network and share news. Over the years, the FCC has lived in many buildings, some now demolished, but it found a home at the Old Dairy Farm Depot on Lower Albert Road in 1982, and has remained there since. 

Since 2022, the question of lease extension for the long-established FCC premises comes up every three years, rather than every seven years, which had previously been the norm for the leasing terms between the FCC and the Hong Kong government since 1982 when it first moved to the North Block of the Old Dairy Farm Depot, a Grade I historic building. It shares the building with the Hong Kong Fringe Club (South Block).

As a members-only club and social meeting place, the FCC comprises the Main Bar & Lounge, Bert’s for jazz music and bistro bites, the Dining Room for western and Asian cuisines, the Verandah, two private dining rooms, a work room, and a health club with fitness equipment, steam room, sauna, showers, and changing rooms. Membership to the FCC is available to correspondents of foreign media titles and journalists who work for Hong Kong-based media titles, as well as professionals, authors, businesspeople, and diplomats under an associate, corporate, or diplomatic memberships.

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