Posted : February 2014
Author : Julie M. Rodriguez
The world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, has run into some financial
troubles that may result in management shutting down air conditioning and
elevator service to its 163 floors. A dispute over thousands of dollars in
unpaid service fees threatens to leave residents stranded in a sweltering building
after paying $55,000 in cash to live in the tower for the year.
The dispute involves a yearly $25,000 service fee on top of
the premium residents are already paying to live in the Burj Khalifa. (That
cost shouldn’t be too surprising when you consider that the building’s waste
literally has to be loaded onto a truck and carried out of the city.) There are
900 luxury apartments in the building, and many tenants are already looking for
new places to live. Residents and landlords who have paid their rent in full
have complained to the media that the developer, Emaar Properties, is punishing
loyal tenants for the outstanding bills of just a few property owners.
Apparently some of of the landlords who own apartments in
the building have simply refused to pay the fees since 2012, resulting in their
tenants being threatened with restricted electricity and locked-up common
areas. It seems that targeting those individual residents hasn’t had the
desired impact, so now Emaar is planning to make the entire building unlivable
in a bid to force the delinquent owners to pay up.
The building has faced financial difficulties since it began
construction in 2004; the project could only be completed when the Abu Dhabi royal family
granted the project a $20 billion bailout. In 2012, two years after opening,
80% of the luxury apartments were occupied, but 20 floors worth of office spaces
remained unoccupied.
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