It's no secret that I'm not a fan of the Kingdom city project. There are two main reasons for that.
1) The location is completely inappropriate. It doesn't fit with it's surroundings (it's a resort area). It significantly extends the urban sprawl. This is particularly bad since there is a lot of undeveloped land within the city.
2) The demand isn't there. CRE demand is already soft in Jeddah, likewise for luxury residential. So a massive WTB is already too much. That's bad enough. You may want to give the benefit of the doubt and project that demand will pick-up in the 6 years or so it takes to build it (although I doubt it. Jeddah isn't Dubai, or even Riyadh), but it's not just one supertall that they plan to build, but a whole forest of them (to get the massing). They're planning to build a whole city! Add that there are also other major projects in Jeddah (like Ruwais, Khuzam, city-centre, old airport) plus competition from KAEC and it's a mess.
I don't want to be the killjoy in the midst of all the excitement over the idea of building the WTB. So now that I pointed these important issues out, let me propose an alternative development that will somewhat mitigate these problems whilst still building that monster. I've wasted a couple of hours coming up with this!
Split the kingdom city development in Obhur from the WTB project. Kingdom city should be developed as a leisure/residential project with the lake, golf course, resort hotel, marina, villas, you get the idea.
As for the WTB, site it in a seperate project, that for sake of argument I'll call Kingdom Commerce Centre (KCC). Yes I'm ripping of the ICC in Hong Kong.
Here's a render I crudely knocked up in sketch-up:
The project is to be located in undeveloped land right in the heart of the business district. Land acquisition shouldn't be a problem for the likes of al-waleed.
So project consists of the following components:
1KCC (left tower)- 1180m tower, mixed use
2KCC (right tower) - 400m tower, commercial and hotel
KCC plaza (area in yellow) - low rise retail, f&b
KCC residences (top tower) - 250m residential
Other features:
Pavillion (brown) - Elevated terrace linking the components together. Covered walkway, and outdoor spaces.
Waterfront (blue) - outdoor space with water-features and f&b outlets
To further improve the massing. Alwaleed can help fund Kinan's Andalucia gardens project (since he controls the parent Savola). I've added the two towers (210m, 260m I estimated) from that project in my renders.
