Boardwalk Empire

“The world over, everyone is talking about Beirut today, especially in creativity and entertainment,” boasted Samer Bsatt at the June 9 launching of Zaitunay Bay. Beirut Waterfront Development (BWD) held the launching of this residential and retail mega-project — inviting their 22 restaurant and retail tenants, the contractors, investors, shareholders and members of the media — to announce the “first and only [commercial] boardwalk in Lebanon” according to Bsatt, the group’s general manager. The 20,000-square-meter waterfront project along Beirut’s hotel district coastline aims to cater both to Beirut’s tourists and ‘fun in the sun’ seekers and strategically position the bay as the meeting point for yacht-coasters who sail the Mediterranean during the summer months, perhaps as new members of the upcoming exclusive yacht club. Farouk Kamal, chairman at BWD, a joint venture that began in 2004 between Solidere and the London-based Stow Development, said that throughout Lebanon’s political upheavals and