I just read this in the news. Daily Times has reported the inauguration of The Centaurus, Pakistan’s first seven-star hotel project, in Islamabad.
I am left wondering what are these people thinking? Can Pakistan afford, and sustain, a 7-star hotel? Do we really need one? And what is a 7-star hotel, after all? We can barely maintain a decent 2 or 3 star hotel in our major cities. Are we now competing with Dubai for architectural grandiosity? And whoever came up with the name should probably look for a job in Hollywood…
ISLAMABAD: The Centaurus, Pakistan’s first seven-star hotel project, was inaugurated on Thursday. The $350 million complex is planned to have a 37-storey deluxe hotel, with two 21-storey residential towers, a 25-storey corporate office complex, and a 5-storey shopping mall. The complex will have a parking lot that would accommodate over 2,000 vehicles. The project will be completed in three years… The Pak Gulf Construction Private Limited company (PGCL) and Messrs Atkins engineering company – the constructors of Dubai’s renowned Burj Al Arab – are executing the project. Saudi Arabian Al-Tamimi Group and the Sardar Group of Companies are making the investment….
President General Pervez Musharraf on Thursday said it was “the right time to invest in Pakistan� because of the country’s positive economic policies of de-regulation, liberalisation and privatisation coupled with a liberal foreign exchange regimen. “We have opened all sectors of the economy for investment and the scourge of red-tapism and bureaucratic delays are being done away with,� said the president at the foundation-laying ceremony of The Centaurus.
WEIRD comments people. If someone has money and wants to open a business, thats their problem!!! If you dont like it, instead of spending your money there, give it all to the earthquake fund then. You want Pakistan to stay backwards, so you can go to other countrries and spend your money there? No wonder why people arent investing in pakistan as much as we need it. This is a SHOPPING MALL, OFFICE BUILDING, REVOLVING RESTAURANT, APARTMENTS, not just a HOTEL, so chillax, we need 100’s more of these things going on in Pakistan.
A MEGA PROJECT IN THE CAPITAL OF PAKISTAN. WHY NOT. HAS ANY ONE BEEN TO ISTANBUL LATELY. IT HAS TENS AND TWENTIES OF SUCH HOTELS ALL OVER THE CITY AND THEY ALL ARE THRIVING. YES ONE COULD SAY THAT PAKISTAN IS NOT TURKEY. YES THAT IS TRUE, BUT IT COULD BE LIKE TURKEY AND ISLAMABAD COULD BE LIKE ISTANBUL (ORIGINALY NAMED ‘ISLAM- OPLE’) IF WE TRY HARDER. WE NEED TO CHANGE OUR MIND SET AND STRIVE FOR EXCELENCE. THE SKY IS THE LIMIT.
”an investment is a business decision….” Yes that is for the investor to decide….
(by the way, when petro dollars r spent, from madrassas to luxury hotels to jets, who knows who’s decision it is!!)
However, the national wealth (proceeds from the sale) belongs to the nation…..better spent on domains beneficial to the deserving many (also citizens!) than on the perpetual well being of the few. Money circulated through investment in the education (of many), health, environment, infrastructure than through consumption (of few)seems to me a much better proposition.
the person who conceived the idea, and his collaborators, should be buried beneath its rubble without their fateha being said
As has been alluded to by others before, I think a conversation on property prices in Pakistan would be very interesting. The expats really have been a major issue in the market for real estate…..my parents (who are NOT expats) are looking for a new house in Karachi these days and they said that 80% of the houses that are up for sale are owned by expats!!! This is really apalling.
I’ve always wondered about this, so maybe some of you can answer this question….do we have higher property taxes for houses that nobody is living in? i.e. I think in some countries, you pay the normal property tax on your first or primary house (i.e. the one you actually live in) but the tax is much higher for any other property you own. It would be great if Pakistan had something like that…this would make the market less attractive to expats and would make the market as a whole much more stable.
You hear so much about the explosion in property prices in Karachi. Yes, that is true, but the untold story is that most of these expensive houses are not occupied..the expats may be snapping up property…but most of them dont intend to occupy these places….so after this boom there will probably be a sharp decline that wont be too good for the market.