Shanghai: Financing for the kilometre-high Kingdom Tower is complete, Talal Al Maiman, chief executive officer and managing director of Kingdom Real Estate Development Co., said in an interview in Shanghai on Friday.
The Kingdom Tower in Jeddah will eclipse today’s highest skyscraper — the 828-metre Burj Khalifa in Dubai — when completed in 2018. The tower is expected to cost $1.2 billion to build, with construction expected to be concluded in about five- and-a-half years, the company has said.
“We have all the investors, all the finance, all the money we need,” Al Maiman said. “It took us beyond 20 months to convince investors, working every detail and aspect of financing.”
The tower, about 50 floors higher than Burj Khalifa, will include a Four Seasons hotel, apartments, offices, three lobbies on the upper floors and the world’s highest observation deck on the 157th level, said its designer Adrian Smith, the architect also responsible for Burj Khalifa, in an interview last year. Kingdom Real Estate is an arm of Kingdom Holding Co., Saudi Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal’s investment company.
“People want to move from the position of houses to apartments,” Al Maiman said. “We have lots of rich people in Saudi Arabia.”
