Revitalising Beirut’s downtown an onerous task

Three months ago, Solidere, the company that gave us the Beirut Central District (BCD) or “the downtown”, as it is more commonly known, quietly named Jamal Itani, the former head of the Council for Development and Reconstruction, as its manager of operations.

The word on the street is that Mr Itani has been appointed because the company has recognised the BCD is simply not working. The area is a ghost town and businesses are closing by the day.

Solidere is the real estate development company, founded in 1994 by the billionaire former prime minister Rafik Hariri, a man who 11 years later would be murdered, along with 20 others in a bomb attack on the Beirut seafront. More of that later.

Yes there have been massive security issues to cope with, but the business owners in the area say there has been little in the way of crisis management. They say Solidere has focused on its bottom line instead of ensuring the area was both a prosperous and genuine and inclusive national space. They say it could have been more flexible with rents and more creative with the dozens of empty units that scream the area’s failure.

Meanwhile, Solidere itself is now more than ever regarded as a hotbed of Sunni cronyism with a reputation as a bullying and ruthless landlord.

But back in the mid-’90s, most of us who considered ourselves pro-business, admired what Solidere stood for. What was not to like? In a dysfunctional country that had shredded itself in 15 years of conflict and hatred, here was a company that promised to get things done. Solidere’s new breed of executives rode into town brandishing an MBA culture that crystallised the optimism of Mr Hariri and his Horizon 2000 reconstruction programme. The rebuilding of the old Burj, the heart of the capital, would be the jewel in his reconstruction crown, a hub for vacationing Arabs that would showcase the very best of what Lebanon could once again offer.

Of course there were critics. The politicians and those who owned property in the area branded Solidere as nothing more than a Sunni sledgehammer that was using Hariri’s vast wealth, political clout and international (read Saudi Arabian) connections to expropriate private land in return for shares that represented a fraction of value. But those of us drinking the Kool Aid argued that there was no other way if we wanted to get things done and Lebanon was again to open for business.

That these allegations have stuck is not because those who made them had uncanny foresight (indeed, most of it was nothing more than political point-scoring and knee-jerk griping), but because Solidere, blinded by hubris, proved them right.

And yet it all started so well. When the BCD opened for business in 2000, the city centre looked like it might regain its popular appeal. Even after September 11, Beirut, epitomised by its new, gleaming city centre, became a friendly refuge for Arab tourists in a world momentarily wary of the Middle East.

But the spring of 2005 and fallout of the Hariri killing changed all that. Solidere, which had fined tenants for a wrongly placed satellite dish or an unsightly laundry line, suddenly had no problem accommodating a garish tomb for the late prime minister in the shadow of the newly built Mohammad Al-Amin Mosque, a building that was also seen by many as symbol of Hariri (read Sunni) intent.

The BCD became a political battleground, first as the scene of the pro-Syrian March 8 rally, then one week later the site of the anti-Syrian March 14 demonstration, then the location of the 18-month sit-in by Hizbollah and its allies from 2006 to 2008. Not only was business in the area crushed, the heart of the city was ripped out.

That was six years ago and nothing has really changed. The Beirut Souqs, which opened in 2009, was the last roll of the dice, but as a retail offering it has done little to revitalise the area, and many shops have closed and moved to more affordable and vibrant locations.

If Mr Itani’s appointment is indeed an acknowledgement that something is rotten, then he has his work cut out.

Michael Karam is a freelance writer based in Beirut

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