Hotels, Palaces & Luxury Villas

Crowning glory at West Bay

The West Bay Complex... due for completion in June 2004.

With a huge 29-storey office block, twin residential towers, 20 town houses and a magnificent Four Seasons Hotel, The West Bay Complex in Doha is not only changing Qatar's skyline, but also its lifestyle!

The owner, Qatar's first Deputy Premier and Foreign Minister, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim Bin Jaber Al Thani, has just sold the office tower to Qatar Telecom (Qtel) - the country's sole telecommunications provider - but he will continue to administer the rest of the complex. Construction Development Company (CDC), the main contractor on site, says that the whole complex will be completed, on schedule, in June 2004 - 36 months from start to finish.

The hotel - resembling joined twin towers, each topped by a coronet - will be managed by Four Seasons. The luxury hotel, which is expected to match the George V in Paris in terms of amenities, will have 240 rooms, including one royal suite, four presidential suites and a number of executive suites. The 600-700-seat ballroom will also function as a meeting room, and there will be a number of additional multi-purpose rooms available for conferences and seminars.

In addition to the all-day restaurant, West Bay's hotel will also feature an Italian restaurant, cigar lounge and tea lounge. Four Seasons' representatives have been visiting the city frequently to oversee the development.
What was originally to be a clubhouse has now been redesigned as a spa and will have a number of exclusive features, many totally new to Qatar, says a spokesman for CDC.

The 20 town houses - in five blocks of four - are being built right on the beach by the 110-berth marina and will be available for rent. They and the two residential towers will have their own landscaped gardens and swimming pool, while the hotel will have three swimming pools.

Says Nabil Elias, project manager for CDC: 'At peak times there have been 2300 workers on the site. We were the only purely local company to pre-qualify for this project - which has cost in excess of QR500 million ($137.3 million) - although a number of other local companies tendered in joint venture with international firms.
'Currently, this is the largest (non-industrial) project in the country, and at 29 storeys and 158 m, the office tower is the tallest building in Qatar.'

Although Qatar's construction industry as a whole has recently been suffering from a shortage of cement, Nabil Elias says: 'Most of our concrete work had already been completed before the crisis and although what remains has been slowed down by the shortage, it represents only a small proportion of the outstanding work, so there is no real problem.'