HomeBurdened by debt and a devastating real estate crash, Dubai is doing what it does best: doubling down.
Just one month after a close brush with bankruptcy, Dubai celebrated the opening of the world’s tallest building on Monday – a rocket-shaped edifice that soars 2,717 feet and has views that reach 60 miles.
The glittering celebration may have been an attempt by Dubai’s ruler, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, to shift the focus from Dubai’s current economic troubles to a future filled with more promise.
All the same, the tower’s success by no means signals a recovery in Dubai’s beaten-down real estate market, where prices have collapsed by as much as 50 percent and many developers are having trouble finding occupants for their buildings.
With its mix of nightclubs, mosques, luxury suites and boardrooms, the Burj is an almost perfect representation of Dubai’s own complexities and contradictions. It will have the world’s first Armani hotel; the world’s highest swimming pool, on the 76th floor; the highest observation deck, on the 124th floor; and the highest mosque, on the 158th floor.
But in deciding to change the tower’s name from Burj Dubai to Burj Khalifa, in honor of the president of Abu Dhabi, Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahyan, Dubai revealed a rare streak of humility consistent with its diminished economic condition.
Once the most proudly autonomous of the United Arab Emirates, Dubai has found that its financial troubles have made it more dependent on Abu Dhabi and more likely to be drawn closer into the federation.
“Dubai not only has the world’s tallest building, but has also made what looks like the most expensive naming rights deal in history,” said Jim Krane, the author of “City of Gold: Dubai and the Dream of Capitalism.” “Renaming the Burj Dubai after Sheik Khalifa of Abu Dhabi – if not an explicit quid pro quo – is a down payment on Dubai’s gratitude for its neighbor’s $10 billion bailout last month.”
The opening festivities had the feel of a national holiday, with fireworks, parachute jumps and shooting streams of water from the world’s tallest fountain.
At a cost estimated at $1.5 billion, the Burj took five years to build, is more than 160 floors high and has comfortably surpassed the previous record holder in Taiwan, the Taipei 101.