Transport & Facilities — The Festival Walk Link, Sports Centre, and Everyday Campus Amenities

City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK) Integrated Information Database · Module 05 — Campus

An underground passage barely fifty metres long, squeezed by sixty thousand people a day — arguably the busiest "campus gateway" in Hong Kong. CityU's "transport DNA" is two sides of the same coin as its downtown location: it sits against MTR Kowloon Tong station and underneath the Festival Walk mall, giving it among the best public-transport accessibility of any university in Hong Kong; on campus, its giant building complex packs in sports, dining, library, and medical facilities in a tight vertical stack. This article covers four questions: how you get here, where the link corridor came from, how to find your way around campus, and what facilities exist. For an overview of campus location and geographic layout, see 〈Campus Location, Geographic Zones, and Building Registry〉.

A note on sourcing: all factual claims are cited at the end of this article. Transport schedules, shop counts, and facility listings change over time; this article follows current public records, and the University's current 〈Getting to CityU / Campus〉 pages remain authoritative.

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# 1. External Transport: MTR Kowloon Tong Station + Festival Walk

The backbone of CityU's external transport is the MTR Kowloon Tong station and Festival Walk mall — a "metro-and-mall" pairing.

Festival Walk is directly connected to MTR Kowloon Tong station, which serves both the East Rail line and the Kwun Tong line^※ — which means CityU is plugged into two main arteries of Hong Kong's rail network: the East Rail line (running through the New Territories East, crossing the border at Lo Wu / Lok Ma Chau, and linking Hung Hom with the Hong Kong Island exhibition district) and the Kwun Tong line (spanning east–west across Kowloon and connecting to the Yau Tsim Mong area). For staff and students, this makes for a "dual-line" campus: commuting from the New Territories, Kowloon, or Hong Kong Island is all relatively straightforward.

The typical route for staff, students, and visitors is: Kowloon Tong station → Festival Walk → CityU academic complex. It takes about 5 minutes on foot from MTR Kowloon Tong station via Festival Walk to reach the CityU campus^※. Festival Walk is a shopping centre at 80 Tat Chee Avenue, opened on 13 November 1998, developed by Swire Properties and CITIC Pacific^※, with seven retail levels and four office floors above, around 220 shops, a cinema, an indoor ice rink, and a carpark with 830 spaces^※. For the CityU community, Festival Walk is at once the unavoidable "front porch" of the daily commute and a natural extension of campus dining, retail, cinema, and ice-skating — a unique "external-facility dividend" of CityU's downtown siting.

CityU is about a 30-minute drive from Hong Kong International Airport (per University campus materials); buses, green minibuses, and taxis also connect the neighbourhood around Kowloon Tong (exact routes per the Transport Department and University materials). The main campus itself is compact in footprint, so staff and students rely heavily on the MTR, and private-car commuting is comparatively limited.

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# 2. The "Time Tunnel": A Short History of the Link Corridor

The pedestrian passage between CityU and Festival Walk, used by more than sixty thousand people a day^※, is no improvised afterthought — it is the product of a three-decade spatial history traceable back to a land auction in 1993.

# Why was Festival Walk built right next to CityU?

CityU moved into its permanent campus on Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon Tong, in 1989^※. The government-owned plot on the eastern edge of the campus was formerly home to the Tat Chee Avenue public transport terminus, in operation from 1 March 1989 until its closure on 1 March 1993^※, along with an adjoining open-air carpark; earlier still, the site had been a squatter settlement known as "Chu Kau Chai Village" (朱古仔村). After the terminus closed, the government put the roughly 21,000-square-metre site up for tender. In 1993, Swire Properties and CITIC Pacific won the plot with a government land-auction bid of HK$2.9 billion^※, developing it as a 50:50 joint venture, with a further construction cost of about HK$2.2 billion^※ — more than HK$5 billion in total. The mall's northeastern boundary abuts the CityU campus directly, rather than facing it across a street — and this "seamless overlap" is no accident: building a mall on a former public-transport site, directly connected to an MTR station and planned with a pedestrian link to the neighbouring university, was precisely the core logic of Festival Walk's siting.

# Was the link part of the original design, or added later?

Architecturally, the pedestrian link was part of the original scheme. Festival Walk was designed by the American architecture firm Arquitectonica^※, whose concept centred on the three themes of "water, canyon, glacier" — "water" referring to the meandering pedestrian routes that mimic a river's flow on each level, "canyon" to the vertical depth of the atrium as seen from the top floor, and "glacier" to the indoor ice rink. Arquitectonica's project description is explicit: Festival Walk features pedestrian connections to the adjacent City University of Hong Kong^※, counting the University's staff and students among its core users. The MTR Kwun Tong line tunnel (the East Rail line's predecessor was the Kowloon–Canton Railway) runs beneath the entire site, and the mall connects directly to Kowloon Tong station^※ — in effect, this link system strung MTR station, mall, and university into a single line, and that circulation route was already baked into the design before the mall opened in 1998.

# Where is the passage, and how do you use it?

From the mall side, the entrance sits at Level LG1, next to an escalator by shop LG1-10^※; after walking through, you emerge at Level 3M of the Yeung Kin Man Academic Building (AC1), connecting to the footbridge between the Fong Yun-wah Building and the Mong Man-wai Building — a bridge students call the "3M Bridge". The passage itself also carries a student nickname: the "Time Tunnel" (時光隧道). The name comes from the dim, sun-shaded interior and the long-running display panels chronicling CityU's history — walking through feels like passing through time. The red exit door (known to staff and students as the "Red Door") marks the entry point to Level 3 of the Yeung Kin Man Academic Building and is the first navigational anchor new students learn. The University's official directions are simple: from MTR Kowloon Tong station, take Exit C2 into Festival Walk, and walk about five minutes to reach campus^※ — beyond commuting, this is also the preferred route for dodging open-air stretches in Hong Kong's heat or rain while enjoying the mall's air conditioning.

# The property changed hands several times — did the link ever close?

Festival Walk's ownership has passed through three complete transfers since opening in 1998, yet the pedestrian passage has never been shut because of a change in title:

Through all three ownership transfers, the mall's function of serving CityU's staff and students never wavered, and the link corridor stayed open throughout.

# What changed after 2019?

During Hong Kong's 2019 social unrest, CityU tightened campus access control. From December 2019, the University barred the public from freely entering campus, erected fencing around the perimeter, posted security guards at entrances, and required staff and students to tap their cards and show identification^※; turnstiles were installed at the "Time Tunnel" entrance as well. Subsequently, per the Chinese Wikipedia, in November 2025, CityU relocated the "Time Tunnel" turnstiles inward to Level 3 of the Yeung Kin Man Academic Building^※, moving the access-control boundary deeper into campus and giving the passage a more "semi-public" character.

# The "Time Tunnel" becomes the "Tunnel of Future Innovations"

In late 2024, CityU appointed QUAD Studio, through open tender, to redesign the "Time Tunnel". The renovation proceeded in four phases, keeping the passage open to pedestrians throughout, with much of the work done overnight. The "Tunnel of Future Innovations" was officially unveiled on 21 May 2025^※:

The University's School of Creative Media positions the passage as a "showcase corridor" for student work. The Tunnel of Future Innovations received a Silver Award in the education-building category at the Perspective A&D Design Awards in January 2026^※.

# Why did CityU buy the Festival Walk office tower in 2025?

On 10 December 2025, CityU's subsidiary CityU Limited signed a sale-and-purchase agreement with Mapletree Pan Asia Commercial Trust (MPACT) to acquire the four Grade-A office floors above Festival Walk for HK$1.96 billion (about US$252 million)^※, with a gross floor area of roughly 213,982 sq ft (about 19,882 sq m). The University cited several reasons for the purchase: a surge in demand for wet-laboratory and other research facilities, with additional campus space not expected until 2030 or later^※; and the economics of buying outright versus renting off-campus labs, which would incur heavy fit-out and reinstatement costs. The transaction completed legal settlement in February 2026^※ — through an outright property acquisition, CityU upgraded its relationship with Festival Walk from "adjacent" to "integrated", the third historical layer of the CityU–Festival Walk relationship after daily commuting dependence and lifestyle consumption.

From "former public-transport terminus" (1989–1993) → "mall construction site" (1993–1998) → "mall opens, link corridor comes into service" (1998) → the "Time Tunnel" becomes a CityU cultural icon (2000s–present) → unveiling of the "Tunnel of Future Innovations" (2025) → "CityU buys the office tower" (2026) — these six milestones trace a thirty-year urban spatial history, from passive adjacency to active integration.

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# 3. Getting Around Campus: Indoor Walkways and the Colour-Coding System

CityU's main campus works differently from a conventional university with tree-lined outdoor paths: its internal "transport" is built on indoor corridors, lifts, and escalators that stitch the giant academic building complex into one whole. Inside the Yeung Kin Man Academic Building, staff and students navigate by a five-colour zoning system — Purple (P) / Green (G) / Blue (B) / Yellow (Y) / Red (R)^※, using "colour + level" as coordinates. The University runs a "Gathering Point System" and carefully designed wayfinding signage^※ to help newcomers and visitors orient themselves in this "indoor labyrinth". Campus access is controlled; card-holders may enter daily from 07:00 to 23:00^※.

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# 4. Sports Facilities

The core of CityU's sports provision is the Hu Fa Kuang Sports Centre and the Joint Sports Centre.

# Hu Fa Kuang Sports Centre: Naming, Collapse, and Rebirth

The centre is named after Hu Fa Kuang, founder of Ryoden Development^※. The original centre was a five-storey building housing a multi-purpose hall and several practice rooms (per English Wikipedia). On 20 May 2016, the roof structure of the sports centre collapsed (per English Wikipedia; see the Campus Anecdotes / "wild history" module for details — this module passes over the incident), after which the centre was rebuilt on the same site.

The rebuilt Hu Fa Kuang Sports Centre opened with a grand ceremony on 27 May 2026^※. According to the University, the new centre's highlights include: the largest single-storey sports hall of any university in Hong Kong (10-metre-high ceiling, maple flooring)^※, the first double squash court at a local university (with motorised movable side walls)^※, a table-tennis room meeting international standards (accommodating 8 tables, ITTF-spec flooring)^※, the first all-weather indoor running track at a local university (connecting to a 1.5-km outdoor hillside trail)^※, plus digital fitness equipment (cloud-based health tracking) and among the first standard pickleball courts at any local university^※. The main hall can be flexibly configured as 14 badminton or pickleball courts, 3 basketball or volleyball courts, or 1 handball court^※. The University sums up the design ethos as "Built for excellence, designed for all".

The old Hu Fa Kuang Sports Centre reportedly featured a multi-purpose lobby, four practice rooms (for badminton, basketball, volleyball, martial arts, dance, etc.), a table-tennis room, six squash courts, an indoor rock-climbing wall, two fitness rooms, two golf practice rooms, and a golf simulator room (per older records relayed from search results). Facilities have shifted somewhat between old and new; the University's current materials are authoritative.

CityU also maintains the Joint Sports Centre, a sports facility shared among several institutions (per University campus materials). The University's sports teams and their competitions and traditions are covered in the Student Life module.

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# 5. Library, Dining, and Other Everyday Facilities

• Run Run Shaw Library: the University's main library, located on Levels 2–3 of the Yeung Kin Man Academic Building, with about 2,700 seats and a collection of roughly 3.25 million items^※. See also 〈Campus Landmark Buildings〉 and 〈The Library and the Indra and Harry Banga Gallery〉.
• Indra and Harry Banga Gallery: a museum-grade exhibition space on the 18th floor of the Lau Ming-wai Academic Building (see 〈Campus Landmark Buildings〉).
• Campus dining: multiple buildings across the main campus house restaurants and canteens (canteens); the Yeung Kin Man Academic Building alone contains several dining outlets (per English Wikipedia).
• External extension: Festival Walk's restaurants, supermarket, cinema, and ice rink are steps away, effectively expanding CityU's amenities footprint.
• On-campus retail / services: the University runs retail outlets including the CityUHK Gift Shop (per University campus materials).
• Visitor accommodation: the Academic Exchange Building houses the "CityUHK Lodge"^※; staff/visitor quarters also include Wong Fung Ling Hall (Tak Chee Yuen) and others (per University campus materials).
• Medical and health: CityU provides campus medical/health services offering basic care and support to staff and students (per University campus materials). This database lacks authoritative details on the exact name, location, and opening hours of these services, so this entry is flagged "partially unverified"; the University's current 〈Student Development Services / Health Services〉 pages are authoritative. The newly opened Hu Fa Kuang Sports Centre also folds sport and health ("whole-person participation") into the campus health strategy (per University 2026 materials).

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# 6. Summary

CityU's transport and facilities reflect its "compact urban" DNA at every turn: externally, the MTR Kowloon Tong station and Festival Walk give it a rare "dual-line metro + large shopping mall" accessibility among Hong Kong universities, while the "Time Tunnel" linking the two, after more than thirty years, has evolved from a former public-transport site into a landmark corridor used by over sixty thousand people a day — and moved one step closer to full integration in 2026 with CityU's purchase of the Festival Walk office tower; internally, indoor walkways and a colour-coding system compress sports, library, exhibition, and dining spaces into one giant building complex; and externally again, the University absorbs the mall's restaurants, cinema, and ice rink below as a natural extension of campus life. This facility landscape is both a product of CityU's land scarcity and a concrete manifestation of its character as a university "layered onto the city".

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