Adjacent to downtown Beirut is a small area called “Khanda2 el Ghami2”, and if you happened to pass by it someday, you can’t but notice the many abandoned buildings there. Once street in fact, the Tayyan street which is pretty close to Beirut Digital District, looks deserted with many vacant buildings. And what’s weirder is that there isn’t a single construction site there even though we all know there’s always a high demand for Land in Beirut.
Upon asking around a bit, one trusted source told me there’s a real estate company that is slowly purchasing every single building in Khanda2 el Ghami2 (the area enclosed in red), and have so far purchased many of the buildings you see in the picture above, in order to later demolish them all and reconstruct the whole area to make way for commercial spaces, residential towers, etc… and thus making it quite similar to what Solidere looks like.
Not that I oppose the idea, since the company isn’t doing anything illegal and is actually offering good money to the owners, but if would be interesting to learn more about this project. So if you have any information about it, please do share it in the comments.
It’s BDD itself. Check out their website and their plans to turn a part of the neighborhood upside down. The name of the real estate company is also mentioned there.
Thanks P, here’s the masterplan for BDD http://beirutdigitaldistrict.com/masterplan.php
The last phase of the project occupies 2 blocks, while the area I highlighted above is much larger (from istiklal street to fouad chehab).
Moreover, I actually asked if what this real estate company is doing is related to BDD and was told it isn’t.
Another ex-christian neighbourhood falls to the nawars
When you say Nawars do you mean Muslims in general, or are you specifically employing the de-humanizing stereotype of Shiite refugees who were forced to abandon everything they owned during the ruthless shelling of south Lebanon during the civil war?
Because I’m sure the rich companies that are building this new project contain both Muslim and Christian neoliberal capitalists of all denominations.
I’m also curious how old you are. I’d like to think you were conditioned by the disillusioned, hate-soaked battlefields of the 1980s that caused and continue to cause so much ruin to this country’s social fabric. It would be even more sad if you did not live those days and have merely absorbed this fear-mongering hatred from your family or friends.
Couldn’t agree more.
Once again, we do not learn from our mistakes … Do we really need commercials in DT !!! Don’t we have enough already with all the traffic that they make.
All Europeans are disappointed when they visit Beirut for lack of traditional “Arabic”, “Oriental” markets (Like the old souk in Tripoli). What we offer them, smart us, are Mango, H&M, and the like …
As far as we know, this area belongs to solider, and its not newly owned by them. Its in their vision to expand to that area since the start.
Could this the project ? In this article, they only mention refurbishing existing buildings and not building new ones. I hope the project will help develop Khandak al Ghamiq while preserving its architecture,
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Lebanon-News/2013/Jul-31/225696-khandaq-al-ghamiq-hub-for-old-and-new.ashx#axzz2aaBWik3C