Executive Magazine

Save your reputation

by Executive Editors June 5, 2015

written by Executive Editors

Last summer, landowners erected a barrier separating Dalieh, along Beirut’s western coast, from the city and its inhabitants. It set off a tsunami of public criticism, protest and activist organizing — likely not the owners’ intent.

But just as those who erected the barrier were clearly misguided — this beast of barbed wire, chainlink fencing and concertina wire is more suited to a prison than a city — the ensuing tizzy of activism has also stepped outside the bounds of proper debate. In their zeal to protect one of the last vestiges of Beirut’s coast from development, some activists have fallen afoul of the truth, wittingly or not. The vast majority of Dalieh is not public property. Owners’ claims to the land and development rights are, as currently legislated, valid.

Most insidiously, a narrative has emerged that evil (read: rich) forces are oppressing the poor, defenseless fishers of Dalieh. Nothing could be further from the truth — a fact that became glaringly apparent when several of the fishers accepted huge settlements in return for leaving the land. At least one other, as our report on page 20 shows, is holding out for more — more cash, not more justice. Yet after police-backed bulldozers arrived in the early morning of May 2 to demolish fishers’ homes, this narrative of the oppressed fishers of Dalieh gained new currency (see “Tales from the sea“).

Make no mistake, this magazine stands with the preservation of Dalieh and the expansion of public spaces. Beirut is already suffocating from a lack of public space, and sanctifying this scenic gathering point for families, friends and lovers through formal government stewardship would be in the best interests of the city. What mystifies us is that despite the immense popular support for a public Dalieh — find a random person and ask what should be done with the land — some feel they must resort to distorted narratives to justify their position.

Such falsehoods are completely unnecessary, and not just because the public already agrees with the activists’ position. Last month’s brutish early morning demolition was hugely unpopular — and perhaps illegal. A spokesperson for the ISF ludicrously told Executive that this extraordinary operation was “normal.” When we requested the order for the bulldozing from the public prosecutor’s office, we were told we had no right to see it, if it even exists. We are left to conclude either that landowners ordered it, or an overzealous public servant did it in hopes of ingratiating themselves with the landowners. Such opaqueness — and incompetence — only calcifies the deep distrust the public has in Dalieh’s current owners.

Listen to the masses

At this point, it is clear that both sides are playing a little dirty. But activists shouldn’t — espousing falsehoods only undermines their quite reasonable position. Activists must first realize that in the court of public opinion, they have the landowners’ backs up against the wall. Then, offer a square deal: owners invested money in their lands, they should get something in return. That is, activists must come up with a deal that allows landowners to do the socially conscionable thing. The specifics of such an agreement would likely need to be worked out between owners, the government and activists representing the public.

For their part, owners should realize the perilous position they’re in. The Hariris in particular should recognize that their name brand would be irrevocably damaged if they fail the public on yet another important public space — they are already widely blamed for Solidere’s disastrous ‘redevelopment’ of downtown. Instead, they should harken back to a better example of their family’s public service: Rafik Hariri’s laudable gift that helped rennovate the Grand Serail in 1998. If the Hariris commit to giving the land back to the public, other owners will have no choice but follow. If government stewardship is untenable, a trust could be formed to rehabilitate and maintain the area.

But if owners are not yet ready to make such a sweeping commitment, they could at least begin to show good faith. To begin with, tear down the barrier.

June 5, 2015 6 comments

Maqamat

by India Stoughton June 5, 2015

written by India Stoughton

In 2002, Omar Rajeh returned to Beirut from Surrey, England, where he had just finished a Masters in dance studies. Trained in contemporary dance and choreography, he found himself in a city where the genre was almost completely absent. Undaunted, he decided to take matters into his own hands. He founded Lebanon’s first contemporary dance company, Maqamat, recruited a small team of dancers and began to create his own productions. In 2004, he launched the first edition of BIPOD, the Beirut International Platform of Dance, an annual festival featuring world class performances by international and regional choreographers.

Omar Rajeh

Now, more than a decade later, the cultural landscape has changed profoundly, and it’s largely down to Rajeh. When I ask him to tell me about the dance scene in Lebanon before Maqamat, he laughs gently, then apologizes. “It was non existent,” he says. “There wasn’t a dance scene — or more specifically, a contemporary dance scene. Maybe there were a few attempts by companies to do modern dance. I’m laughing because, for me, it’s a kind of nostalgia. There’s a huge difference between today and 2002, when we did the first performance as Maqamat; people are more familiar with contemporary dance. They’re more familiar with the artists, with the international scene.”

Mia Habis

We were chatting in the wake of the press conference to announce the 11th edition of BIPOD. After a decade of running the show, Rajeh has just handed over direction to fellow dancer Mia Habis, who is also his wife. “After 10 years, Omar just wanted to focus on his work as a choreographer — I think it was about time to take BIPOD to somewhere new — so he composed this board with people from the cultural field and they nominated me,” she explains, “because I’ve been in Maqamat for a very long time and I’m a dancer myself.”

Interestingly, on stage, Rajeh and Habis couldn’t be more different. Where Rajeh breaks down the movement in chaotic gestures, falling twists and rolling turns or intense shifts in direction — hallmarks of contemporary training — Habis adheres to the almost rigid grace and poised elegance of more traditional techniques, despite the fact that she has moved from classical forms of dance to contemporary. I only ever remember Rajeh taking part in shows he choreographs himself, but not necessarily as a central figure, because these are productions with many dancers moving on stage at once. As for Habis, you’re more likely to see her as the star of a solo show.

Though she started dancing at a young age, specializing in ballet, Habis studied French literature, marketing and advertising at the Sorbonne. Her dance training came mainly from workshops in Lebanon, where she studied classical techniques with the Beirut Dance Studio before joining Maqamat. Heavily pregnant and full of energy, Habis explains that she has decided to take the festival in a more personal direction, programming accessible performances that locals can easily relate to. It’s an approach that harks back to Maqamat’s early days, and Rajeh’s first attempts to introduce Lebanese audiences to contemporary dance.

“With our first performance in Beirut in 2002, my feeling was that it was all very fresh,” he recalls. “It was talking about everyday things, things that were directly related to the audience. It was a very intimate performance about sexuality, about color, about religion, about our dreams as young people. From this perspective, it had a very strong impact.”

As well as training dancers who later went on to join the company, Maqamat has coproduced performances at home and abroad for a number of young Lebanese dancers and choreographers who’ve chosen to strike out on their own, gradually expanding the dance scene in Lebanon.

“I see it as something that we have to do in order to secure our sustainability,” Rajeh says. “If Maqamat remains the only contemporary dance company in Lebanon, and Omar Rajeh the only choreographer, people will get bored.”

In the interests of furthering the growth of an independent dance scene, Rajeh is focusing his energy on a new project. Beit el-Raqs, or dance house, which opened in April, is a unique residency and training hub, comprising two studios located in Baakline and Deir el Qamar.

“It’s a kind of hub where artists can come for a residency to do their own work, and parallel to this, if they want, they can do other things, like organize meetings, talks and workshops. There are also the regular classes and we’re hoping that, from these classes, we’ll have people who want to go in a more professional direction.”

The enthusiasm in Rajeh’s voice is catching as he discusses the future of dance in Lebanon and the region. “I feel with Beit el-Raqs this is the most important thing to be done today, not only in Lebanon but in the whole Arab world — we don’t have a dance house [anywhere]. Now I think it’s going to be more focused — clearer for us, clearer for the artists. Hopefully, it will start small and then grow.”

June 5, 2015 0 comments

Beirut's private coast Real Estate

Tales from the sea

by Venetia Rainey June 4, 2015

written by Venetia Rainey

This article is part of an ongoing investigation on Beirut’s coast, from Raouche to Ramlet al-Baida. You can find the other articles here.

***

It was 5 a.m. on Saturday May 2 when around 150 police officers descended on Dalieh.

“I was there when they came,” Mohammad Itani tells Executive, speaking from outside the pile of rubble that previously housed him and his relatives. “They came at 5 a.m. with Caterpillars [bulldozers] and got us all out of our houses … they handcuffed some of us, including my nephew’s wife.”

He pauses to beat back the mosquitoes that had gathered in anticipation of dusk in the hot early evening air.

“Everyone’s houses were bulldozed, all of [them]. But we are still living here for the moment, in cars, boats and caves,” he says defiantly. “The officer in charge said they had been told by a high ranking guy in the Hariri family to demolish everything with everyone in there.”

In this context, the ‘Hariri family’ refers to former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri’s widow and five of his children who collectively own a holding company called Irad Investment, which in turn owns or part owns companies that have bought half the land in Dalieh. They, along with GroupMed Holding, own shares in all of the 14 private plots of land that make up Dalieh, and there have long been suspicions that plans are afoot to build a luxury tourism complex on the shrub covered promontory that abuts the city’s national symbol, Pigeon Rocks, on Beirut’s western coast. To this end, several attempts have been made since early 2012 to clear the land of its occupants, previously around 200 fishers and their families.

[pullquote]It’s not clear who exactly asked for the demolition to take place[/pullquote]

It’s not clear who exactly asked for the demolition to take place, although a spokesperson for the ISF, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak on the subject, says it was “normal” and that the police were just “doing their job.”

Regardless, question marks remain over the legality of the operation. The ISF spokesperson was not able to provide any proof of a court approved permit for the operation and Executive was not able to obtain one from the Justice Ministry, although this does not necessarily mean it does not exist. Further, Beirut Governor Ziad Chebib — the person who typically must sign off on city demolitions — tells Executive, “No one asked me. They didn’t ask for permission.” Despite being a lawyer and judge, he says he is unsure whether permission would be necessary if the homes were illegal in the first place.

The events of May 2 have served to reinforce a simplistic narrative of an unwinnable battle between the helpless fishers of Dalieh and ‘evil developers’ bent on robbing Beirut of one of its last communal, free spaces. In fact, the fight for Dalieh is far more complicated, and the case of the fishers’ bulldozed houses — while highly irregular and disturbing — is a red herring; the real front lines are elsewhere.

‘Evil developers’

Legally, the Hariri claim to develop Dalieh is pretty strong. Public records show that they own more than 95 percent of five of Dalieh’s 14 private plots and hold significant stakes in three others. However, they have connections to companies that own much more of the peninsula — firms like Sakhrat al Bahr, the vast majority of whose ownership is not a matter of public record. In total, Hariri-linked companies own more than 90,000 square meters of the 110,000 square meters that make up Dalieh, which is estimated to be worth around $1 billion.

Explore Executive’s map of Beirut’s private coast from Dalieh to the southern city limits

The other shareholders are largely individuals, most of whom possess a small percentage of the 2,400 shares Lebanese law apportions to each plot of land, with a handful of exceptions. This collage of ownership means that any development would require significant negotiations and settlement sums being paid to several shareholders, or a court order in the case of irreconcilable differences.

Dalieh is in Zone 10 of Beirut’s Master Plan, with all but the largest plot falling under Section IV, which can be used for “sporting, maritime, swimming, entertainment, and restaurant activities.” No construction “of any kind” is allowed in plot 1113, the exceptional plot, but a government-granted exception could overturn this.

Although a representative for the owners told Executive there was “no movement on any development plans yet,” something is clearly afoot.

Beirut Mayor Bilal Hamad detailed to Executive a master plan under discussion for Dalieh that would involve a boutique hotel with an extended public sidewalk forming the roof of the property, a public access route around the property’s coastal periphery and public parking. He described the plan, which he said is still in the early stages and does not yet have a permit or contractor attached, as “a green project … a project which gives access to the people, free access.” The owners’ representative said it was just one concept under consideration.

Although this is far from the total ban on development many are campaigning for, Hamad believes this is the best case scenario: “Instead of going and speaking poetry and philosophy, let’s speak facts of life: this is a private property, so we are convincing the private owners to do an environmentally friendly project.”

Governor Chebib echos this sentiment: “We need to preserve these kind of areas … [but] when someone has his private property, he can apply for a construction permit, and no one can tell him no if it’s not based on a legal basis.”

But first, as the events of the last few years have made obvious, they have to clear the land of inhabitants.

‘Helpless fishers’

Looking out from his seventh floor office in Kantari, lawyer Ali Khalil finds himself pondering pearls — and betrayal.

[pullquote]“When they told me … it was an awkward situation for me. I felt like I was stabbed in the back”[/pullquote]

“When they told me, at first it was an awkward situation for me. I felt like I was stabbed in the back,” he tells Executive as he recounted the abrupt ending to his legal representation of nine Dalieh families in spring of last year. “Then I put myself in their shoes. Maybe if I were one of them, I would [have accepted the deal]. They live on [LBP] 20,000 [$13.33] a day; it was the deal of their life.”

He leans back in his chair with a sigh. “All fishermen, their stories between each other, [are all about] are you going to find the pearl today? In the end they found a pearl, but it was not in the form they were hoping for.”

Khalil (full disclosure: he occasionally represents Executive in legal matters) believes he was on the cusp of winning a case to allow the families to stay in Dalieh when, the night before the final appearance before the Court of Urgent Matters, his clients received calls offering them money to drop the suit and move elsewhere. All of them accepted.

Khalil says that his clients were offered around $3 million, while a fisher still living in Dalieh estimated that around 11 families — possibly including others not represented by Khalil — were given on average $500,000 each. This tallies with the figure provided by the landowners’ representative, who said more than $5 million was paid out in total.

One of the families that accepted the deal was the Itani family, whose houses were bulldozed, several members of which are now angling for more compensation by refusing to leave Dalieh. Because of this, Khalil says, they are not pressing charges over the demolition of their homes.

A LEGAL HISTORY OF DALIEH

Order 144, 1925: Defines what is coastal public property in Lebanon and is still in effect today. Categorizes the sea as public maritime domain that, according to Article 2, reaches up to the furthest high-water point on the coast. States that the public has a right to access all natural resources, including the sea.

Decree 6285, 1954: The Beirut Master Plan introduces the zoning still in place today. Dalieh falls in Zone 10. All construction is forbidden along the coast.

Decree 4711, 1966: Amends the regulations for Zone 10, creating four sections with varying degrees of building allowed. The northernmost part of Dalieh is put in Section III, where no construction “of any kind” is allowed and “it is also prohibited to change or alter the natural landscape.” The rest of Dalieh is put in Section IV, which can be used for “sporting, maritime, swimming, entertainment and restaurant activities,” with a 15 percent surface exploitation ratio (relationship between total land and ground property size) and a 20 percent general exploitation ratio (relationship between land and total property size, including all floors).

Decree 4810, 1966: Allows owners of property by the sea to legally exploit the public maritime for the first time if the project is approved by the government and contributes to the tourism and industrial sectors of the economy. Includes a stipulation that 25 percent of the private property should be given to the municipality for public use. Excludes Zone 10 of the Beirut Master Plan.

Decree 169, 1989: Annuls the ban on exploitation of Zone 10’s public maritime domain, as well as the requirement that 25 percent of the development should be given to the municipality. Paves the way for the Mövenpick Hotel to be built (2000–2002) just south of Dalieh. Never published in the Official Gazette, say activists, a requirement for all legislation.

Law 402, 1995: Enables owners of more than 20,000 square meters of land who want to build a hotel to double their general exploitation ratio and quadruple their surface exploitation ratio. In Section III of Zone 10, which covers Dalieh, this means the exploitation ratios for large property owners become 40 percent and 60 percent respectively. Although it expired in 2000, it was renewed for 19 years in 2014.

Decree 7464, 1995: Reconfirms the right of owners of property by the sea to privately exploit the public maritime domain in Zone 10.

Law 444, 2002: Reasserts right of every Lebanese citizen to free and open access to the seashore.

Khalil’s case rested on one central tenet: that the fishers’ homes lay in public maritime domain, defined by Article 2 of Order 144 (1925) as reaching up to the furthest high-water point on the coast. That order, still in effect today, dictates that this public domain cannot be bought or sold and also rules that the public has a right to access all natural resources, such as the sea.

“To cement this argument, we delivered to the court some old judgments issued by criminal courts in Beirut fining the fishers for building on public property,” Khalil says with a smile. “This was in the ‘70s and ‘80s … we still have the receipt proving that [the fishers] paid them.”

The counterargument of the lawyer representing the landowners, who served eviction notices to the nine families in October 2013, relied on a map showing that ownership of all the land in dispute fell to his clients.

So far only one man has successfully managed to challenge this narrative: a lawyer named Dany Moussa who owns a warren-like large wooden shack built onto the sides of Dalieh’s southern cliffs, right by the Mövenpick hotel. According to Khalil, he argued that he was on public property and managed to stop the structure being destroyed, as well as safeguard the road leading to it. Moussa did not respond to repeated requests for an interview.

Agitators

Since the issuance of the 1954 Beirut Master Plan, which prohibited any construction along the coast, a series of laws have been passed to claw back landowners’ rights to develop that sea-drenched part of Dalieh, historically a gathering point for swimmers, fishers and families alike.

Passed in 1966, Decree 4810 allowed those who own property adjacent to the sea to privately exploit the public maritime domain for the first time, on the condition they give 25 percent of their property to the municipality for public use and obtain governmental permission. It excluded all of Beirut’s Zone 10, but this was in turn nixed by Decree 169, which was passed in 1989 when there were two rival governments vying for legitimacy against the backdrop of civil war.

It is here, among this jumble of legislation, that one of the activists’ major fronts of attack is underway.

“While the campaign [the Civil Campaign to Protect Dalieh] was doing legal research … we found out that Decree 169 was issued without the approval of several institutions or being published in the Official Gazette,” explains Abir Saksouk-Sasso, an architect and one of the campaign’s organizers, conspiratorially tapping a map of Dalieh in front of her. “This gave us the opportunity to challenge it legally.”

So with the help of lawyer Nizar Saghieh, who runs law watchdog Legal Agenda, they filed a suit through NGOs Nahnoo and Green Line to abolish the decree. Further legislation from 1995 means that this would not wrest back control of Zone 10’s public maritime domain, but it would reintroduce the 1966 requirement that any project give 25 percent to the municipality.

“If they decide to do a resort,” reasons Mohammad Ayoub, executive manager at Nahnoo, “then at least 25 percent of this place will be public. They already can’t build on the part that faces the Pigeon Rocks; they can’t build where the waves can reach … so this is the aim: to reduce how much they can build on.”

Much of this relies on the Beirut city council rejecting the expected request by developers to be granted an exception to build a bigger property than currently allowed.

Council member Rachid Achkar said they had already turned down an unofficial request to this end by the landowners. He was one of those who opposed it.

“This doesn’t mean they won’t be coming back to the council with an official request,” Achkar tells Executive, “but I’m not ready to give any exceptions. We are keen to have the sea open.”

Dreams and promises … and implications

Down in Dalieh, in a hidden crevice of the land where fishing boats knock solemnly against one another as they count the passing minutes, lives the core of what remains of Dalieh’s decades old community of fishers.

Shattered first by a half baked ministerial promise to build a new port for the families who lived off the sea here, and then again by the fistfuls of money thrown at them by the land owners, a haggard community of around a dozen people remains of the immediate port area’s 90 or so previous inhabitants.

Perhaps the darkest and most opaque chapter in the landowners’ crusade to clear out Dalieh — and one that Executive has previously reported on — centers on the last minute cancellation of a public works and transport ministry project to build a proper port for the fishers back in 2012.

It is not clear why the plug was pulled. The ministry got as far as demolishing the old buildings and homes, but stopped after half rebuilding just one structure. The marble plaque announcing the start of the project is still there, half obscured by overgrown grass.

Many suspect it was the result of pressure from the landowners, and in comments to Executive last year, their representative revealingly commented: “What would have happened, there would have been a port … and then you would lose your private land forever.”

The tradeoff was supposed to be the construction of another port somewhere between Manara and Riviera. Wafiq Jezzieh, president of the Cooperative Association for Fishermen in Ras Beirut, showed Executive a document from the ministry, dated December 19, 2013, promising that this would be done. So far, nothing.

These are not the fishers the public normally hears about. Their life depends on the sea, but they say they would leave Dalieh if a new port were built elsewhere. Their hopes of a proper port, a dream passed down from their parents and grandparents, means they have chosen to stay out of the Dalieh debate. “Of course I’m worried about the loss of this public space,” sighed Jezzieh, “but I’m also worried that if the people in power come against us, then the future is dark.”

The new green line

For many following the Dalieh case, the future seems dark already. The fence put up last year along the Corniche, although since breached, felt like the first nail in the coffin for the picnics, festivals, romantic liaisons and diving competitions Beirutis have enjoyed for years.

Much has been made of the long running public use of the land and its legal implications, but both Saksouk-Sasso and Saghieh admit there is zero basis within Lebanese law for either what is known as prescriptive rights or the right to public ownership based on long term usage.

[pullquote]“I think that if there wasn’t so much spotlight on the case they could [fence the area off]”[/pullquote]

However, the activists did score a victory recently when the Shura Council on May 7 approved a draft decree to classify Dalieh as a national site under the protection of the environment ministry. Dalieh’s biodiversity credentials include monk seals and fruit bats that use the area’s natural caves for shelter. The flat reefs also provide a nursery of sorts for various fish and some of Lebanon’s last remaining coastal plants, according to a number of local studies of the area.

The decree will now to go the Council of Ministers for a final vote. If passed, it would make any development in the area subject to approval by the environment ministry.

The landowners are clearly not happy. “To have the whole area as environmentally protected and prohibit any development would mean denying the property and ownership rights of the current owners,” their representative told Executive by email. “Hence, compensation would be warranted should that be passed.”

Activists are also ready to challenge any future attempt to re-fence the land, on the basis that this would violate the Lebanese public’s inalienable right to access the sea.

“I think that if there wasn’t so much spotlight on the case they could [fence the area off],” said Saksouk-Sasso, “but at the moment they know if they do do that, we would file a case based on several laws: Order 144 and law number 444. It’s illegal to ban access to the sea.”

Further, Beirut’s highest officials — Governor Chebib and Mayor Hamad — are increasingly vocal about supporting the idea of maintaining public access and space in Dalieh, which may prove key to limiting the scope of whatever project is eventually proposed.

Lebanon’s varied and scenic Mediterranean coastline has long provided easy pickings for developers, much to the ire of activists and civil society organizations seeking to preserve heritage, public space and the environment. Nowhere is this struggle clearer than in Dalieh. Historically, real estate companies have usually gotten their way, but with the kind of focused, law based action already underway, Dalieh may well prove to be an exception. The battle for the pearl of Beirut is not over — yet.

[media-credit id=1 align=”aligncenter” width=”590″][/media-credit]

June 4, 2015 1 comment

Real estate Real estate 2015: All puffed up Real Estate

Renting on Lebanon’s black market

by Joseph Ataman June 3, 2015

written by Joseph Ataman

Sitting in the gloom of the single room that is now her family’s home, shadows from the small candle placed between us — the room’s only light — played against the wall as Asmar spoke of her flight from Syria.

Asmar, who preferred not to give her surname, is just one of the estimated one million Syrian refugees now renting accommodation in Lebanon. Two years since she arrived in Beirut’s Shatila Palestinian refugee camp, a small bundle of clothes all that she brought from the rubble of her home, Asmar still lives in the room she first rented. With a lack of affordable rental properties, rental prices and eviction rates have soared, while unregistered tenancies, deliberately left without formal contracts to avoid taxation and legal regulation, appear to be the new norm. Since 2011, the influx of Syrians has brought new challenges to Lebanon’s rental market.

In an unlit, unheated room, sharing a bathroom and a rubbish strewn courtyard with four other families, for Asmar, the difficulties of this new market are all too clear. Her husband has been missing in Syria for over a year after returning for his father’s funeral. Without his $300 income to pay the $250 rent, were it not for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) considering her a vulnerable case, she and her two young daughters would be alone on the streets of Beirut: a victim of forced eviction.

It is the tragedy of her situation, rather than the abuse of a landlord, that threatened to force Asmar from her home. However, as a tenant in Lebanon’s rental black market, she is trapped in a regulatory vacuum that poses worrying consequences not just for Syria’s vulnerable citizens but also for Lebanon.

[pullquote]Without any formal legal agreement, refugees are easy victims of abuse[/pullquote]

Out on the street

When Asmar first arrived in Shatila, her husband never thought to ask for a written lease agreement. With no papers and no proof of her right to live there, when her landlord threatened to force her onto the street, there was little she could do. It is a situation worryingly common among Syrians in Lebanon. A December 2014 report on evictions by the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) and Save the Children found that in three of the four areas assessed in Beirut and Mount Lebanon, less than 10 percent of households possessed a written lease. Where families had been evicted — and 6.6 percent have been since arriving in Lebanon — 98 percent did not have a formal rental agreement.

Without any formal legal agreement, refugees are easy victims of abuse. “Syrians feel vulnerable enough to accept these [informal agreements] or they feel that they don’t know how they’re going to stay so they take on these [leases],” said Nadim Houry, regional director of Human Rights Watch (HRW). “For them, there’s almost no tenancy security.”

Paper trials

But provision of rights is by no means guaranteed through written contracts. A 2014 UNHCR study found that most evictions of Syrian refugees are due to the inability of the tenant to pay the agreed rent. While a legitimate justification for action against the tenant, evictions frequently occur outside legal frameworks and in violation of Lebanese law, which requires a court order for forced expulsions.

When Asmar’s landlord started threatening to force her and her daughters out onto the street, she didn’t know what to do. Without her husband, who had registered them as refugees and received the standard UNHCR information about their legal rights, she was helpless, with no idea she was even entitled to any rights.

While going to court may not bolster Syrian tenants’ legal standing, such procedures could provide an opportunity for government intervention. Conceding that “the government has no intention to negotiate in the rental process,” Ahmad Kassem, senior shelter expert at the Ministry of Social Affairs (MoSA), admits that interventions can take place. “When it comes to evictions over rent non payment, aside from NGO advocacy, we are able to lobby the Ministry of Interior, not to pressure, but to encourage municipalities to disregard evictions.”

[pullquote]“The state is just absent from the [housing] sphere completely”[/pullquote]

But even such actions depend totally on there being formal recognition of rental agreements. The positive result is negligible. “The state is just absent from the [housing] sphere completely,” said HRW’s Houry, “it’s leaving it to market forces and not just even that, but power relations. And in such power relations, Syrians are often the weakest.”

Vulnerable as they are, Syrians are rarely seen as blameless parties in cases of rent abuse. Talking exclusively to Executive, Nabil de Freige, minister for administrative reform, condemned renters who avoided registration. “For Syrians renting, it’s [to] their advantage to pay everything and to register the contract,” he said. “If no taxes are paid [on the income the landlord receives as rent], [the tenants] don’t have any rights. They can go to prison.”

However, de Freige made it clear that all fault cannot be placed on the tenant. “How can I expect to rent you my apartment without a contract? It’s against the law and against my interests.”

“If the tenant has any small problem with the landlord and they go to the authorities, if the contract is not signed or legalized, they will not pay attention to him,” he added. “It’s the fault of both but it’s much more the fault of the property owner.”

A taxing affair

For Houry, the reason behind unregistered, contractless renting is simple: “Landlords don’t want to pay taxes.” Renting to desperate Syrians may be a lucrative business, but it is also one that enjoys unparalleled privacy from the prying eyes of the state’s taxman.

Lebanese law stipulates that all tenancy agreements must be registered with the local municipality, thereby rendering the income taxable. In practice, however, according to Adib Tohme, professor of Law at Sagesse University, unregistered tenants are “invisible” to the authorities. While written agreements can be used as proof of occupancy, oral lease contracts are not unenforceable. “It is within the discretion of the court to decide whether there is a contract or not,” Tohme said, “Oral contracts can be proved by all means of proof — the proof rests on the claimant.”

Exact calculations of tax loss are almost impossible to find in a market in the regulatory shadows, however in the house Asmar occupies, eight other Syrian families pay $250 rent per month, with additional charges for electricity. Registering a tenant requires a written lease, something that Asmar’s husband was never offered, so her Lebanese landlord enjoys a monthly income of over $2,000, tax free — just from one property in a Beirut slum. In the two years she has lived there, Asmar hasn’t seen one government official inquire about who is living there; ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ seems to suit the taxman just fine.

The question of whether unregistered tenancies are policed is “one to be asked to the municipalities,” said MoSA’s Kassem. “Some do, some don’t. There is an interest to get the tax benefit from any lease agreement, but it totally depends on the willingness of the municipality to go through the process [of policing] — on the national level there’s no work on this.”

Quick fixes

This rental black market has not gone unnoticed and efforts are underway to bring greater security to Syrian renters in Lebanon. An interagency scheme led by UNHCR to encourage formal rental agreements has assisted around 15,000 displaced Syrian families through house rehabilitation since 2012. The project involves offering non structural home improvements to Lebanese landlords in exchange for 12 months occupancy free of charge or rent reduction. A formal rental agreement is a prerequisite condition for landlords to be able to access the improvements, even if it doesn’t force landlords to register tenants.

“Due to the limited availability of housing that most Syrians can afford, most refugees live in sub-standard accommodation,” Kassem said. “While providing obvious benefits to refugee tenants, this scheme reduces economic vulnerability and increases security for the beneficiary household. It’s good for both.”

[pullquote]“A landlord sees a desperate Syrian family and they’re going to try and make a quick buck”[/pullquote]

The home advantage

If the refugee experience is one marked by insecurity, then renting property to Syrians provides remarkable security to the Lebanese landlord. Even with this year’s visa restrictions for Syrians, there remains a steady — albeit significantly reduced — flow of refugees pouring across Lebanon’s borders. With a severely limited supply of affordable housing, the market is weighted heavily in favor of Lebanese landlords.

“Syrians are made to pay a premium to reside in the same place,” HRW’s Houry told Executive. “There’s real pressure on the housing market. A landlord sees a desperate Syrian family and they’re going to try and make a quick buck.”

Unaware of housing options available in the local market and with limited funds, many Syrians like Asmar are forced into what little is affordable: rooms in shared houses. For landlords this provides far greater returns, even at the cost of rising rents for Lebanese locals.

Providing far greater returns, landlords are turning to Syrians, not local renters to make their money, pricing Lebanese looking for full apartments out of the market — a situation that both MoSA and UN partners told Executive they see as concerning. But with UNHCR estimating that rent from Syrians contributes $34 million monthly to the local economy, from a Lebanese perspective there is more than enough incentive to keep rents high.

Ultimately, the willingness to allow tenancies to go unregistered is the foremost obstacle to enacting regulation of the rental market. “When it comes to the benefits of the Lebanese hosts, municipalities do not stand against rental abuses — simply because there is a benefit to the people,” MoSA’s Kassem said. “Municipalities think elections — there is always a political dimension to the decision made.”

June 3, 2015 0 comments

Museums & Galleries

A fresh start for the Nicolas Ibrahim Sursock museum

by India Stoughton June 3, 2015

written by India Stoughton

Walking across the Sursock Museum’s courtyard, my attention was diverted from its beautiful façade by a series of glass panels, set at regular intervals amid the neat stone paving. Looking down, I was surprised to see an enormous underground chamber. Beneath my feet lay the museum’s brand new, state of the art exhibition hall, part of an ambitious seven year renovation program that will cost an estimated $10 to $12 million, undertaken by architects Jean-Michel Wilmotte (who did the museography of the Louvre Museum in Paris, among others) and Jacques Abou Khaled (responsible for the design of Lebanon’s Bsous Silk Museum).

Built in 1912 by aristocrat Nicolas Ibrahim Sursock, the villa was given to the city of Beirut as an art museum upon his death. The Sursock Museum first opened its doors to the public in 1961, housing a permanent collection and hosting the annual Salon d’Automne, a juried exhibition of contemporary art, modeled on the French exhibition established in 1903 as a reaction against the conservative Paris Salon.

The museum’s mission was to educate audiences about the arts and to support local production. Prior to closing its doors seven years ago, it had partially fulfilled these aims, but failed to play a major role in Beirut’s burgeoning post war art scene. The work selected for the annual Salon d’Automne, though contemporary, remained steadfastly traditional in terms of media, and the quality was known to fluctuate wildly.

This may be about to change; the museum is set to reopen its doors on October 2. Not only does it now boast unparalleled facilities, but the new team seems ready to shake up its programming. The museum’s new director is Zeina Arida, cofounder and former director of the Arab Image Foundation. She will be working alongside head of programs Nora Razian, fresh from a job as curator of public programs at Tate Modern and Tate Britain. Obviously excited about the scope for reimagining the museum’s role in Beirut, the two women explain what attracted them to the project.

“I was very interested by the possibility of having such a space in Beirut,” says Arida. “For the past 20 years I’ve been struggling to find spaces for exhibitions we wanted to organize, so it was really exciting to get involved in this.”

“For me it’s similar,” adds Razian. “It’s this opportunity to kind of build an institution, to think about what a museum is to Beirut now, to rethink the museum’s role and its place — how it can support artists locally, but also be an international space. For me, it was really the excitement of starting something new.”

Arida gives me a brief history of the museum, joking that they’re still learning the details. The expansion project was initiated back in 2000, she explains, in part due to the fact that the museum lacked the infrastructure to hold temporary exhibitions and showcase the permanent collection at the same time.

“The museum expanded its premises — I think it’s four times the size it was,” she says. “Basically they dug under the garden and built four floors. There’s an auditorium, a library, a restoration workshop, a temporary exhibition hall and the ground floor gallery. So now the total surface is 8,500 square meters, whereas it used to be around 1,500.”

Alongside the cavernous underground gallery, the renovated ground floor now contains two smaller, interlinked gallery spaces, while the upper two floors have been renovated, ready to showcase the permanent collection. A glass annex to the left of the courtyard is set to house a restaurant and gift shop.

The new facilities may be unrivaled by any other Lebanese institution, but it’s the revamped museum’s curatorial direction that will determine whether it becomes an integral part of Beirut’s cultural scene or remains stuck in the past. There are certainly program changes in store. First of all, Razian says that the Salon d’Automne won’t be back in quite the same format. “We’re going to rethink it,” she explains, “and what it means to have an open call exhibition now, in terms of its history, how it can be relevant. Most likely, it’ll be every two years, not every year.”

Then there’s also the permanent collection. The museum currently owns around 700 works, dating from the early 1960s to the early 2000s. The new team intends to continue making both acquisitions and loans to fill in some of the gaps, rotating the display every quarter.

It’s the temporary exhibitions that will likely prove most interesting to the local community however, and in this respect, the museum seems set on taking on a more international identity. “We’re going to have three major exhibitions a year in the big exhibition hall downstairs, which will be mainly thematic group shows,” reveals Razian, “and on the ground floor, we’ll have four exhibitions a year for solo shows, dedicated to emerging and mid career artists, local and international.”

In spite of the museum’s delayed push into the 21^stcentury, the opening exhibition is focused resolutely on the city’s past. “Sylvia Ajemian, the curator who worked with the museum for 45 years, is curating the opening show, which will deal with Beirut,” says Arida. “It’s [entitled] ‘Views on Beirut from 1800 to 1960.’” Ajemian’s selection will consist entirely of works on loan and will be exhibited in the new underground gallery.

“The exhibition charts how Beirut went from Ottoman provincial town to the capital of the nation state, through landscape and orientalist photography and painting,” Razian elaborates. But where Arida and Razian are really making their mark is with their accompanying curatorial program. “In conjunction, we have a public program that investigates the city through different frames. We’ve commissioned artists to produce walks around Beirut, we’ve got workshops for children on architecture, creative writing workshops on the city, panel discussions — one is looking at gender and public space, one is looking at migration, one is looking at speculative cities in the future. We also have a curated film screening. On the ground floor, there’s a display that’s looking at mappings of Beirut done by artists and designers, and research based practice that moves more to kind of imaginary, speculative practice. The idea was to take Beirut as the theme of the opening few months, relaunch the museum in the city, and look at how art and artists produce knowledge.”

Though it remains to be seen whether or not the new and improved Sursock Museum will carve out a niche in a city that has changed dramatically since its closure in 2008, this renewed vision is as stimulating as it is ambitious. The Beirut Art Center, with a similar mixture of non profit solo and group exhibitions by local and international artists, and a museum like emphasis on education, context and discussion, has proven that an audience for thoughtfully staged contemporary art exists. The challenge faced by the Sursock Museum will be to continue to expand this audience — and to draw people back regularly once the novelty wears off, by offering something that’s different from the rest.

Photographs By: Jacques Abou Khaled & Nabu Productions

June 3, 2015 0 comments

Brands Tech

The Atamian story

by Roman St Clair June 2, 2015

written by Roman St Clair

The story of Atamian is the story of its founder Hagop Atamian, who prefers to go by the name, Mr. Jacques. Nattily dressed in a navy birdseye suit matched with a white herringbone shirt, a blue striped tie, a finely manicured white pencil moustache and a Blancpain round his wrist, Atamian sits opposite me in his shiny office north of Beirut and begins to tell me the incredible story of how he came to be one of Lebanon’s largest wholesale watch distributors.

It was almost preordained that Atamian would work in the watch industry. “I was born into a watch sellers’ family and from a young age I learned the trade in my father’s repair shop in central Beirut,” he tells me. Though an accomplished student, his ambitions led him to quit school at the age of 18, as he “wanted to do something better than repairing and so on.” Six years later, in 1960, he had saved up enough money to make a pilgrimage to Switzerland. While there, he worked his way up a small, now defunct, watch factory in La Chaux-de-Fonds, in the so called ‘Watch Valley,’ nurturing business relationships that would later define his future career.

In the early 1960’s, he started to bring small numbers of mid to low range watches in his suitcase back to Lebanon, which he would sell in his father’s shop. He recalls, “In that time, the customers were not rich, they were middle class locals, so the watches weren’t very expensive.” To expand, he realized, he would need to import more watches and start selling wholesale to distributors. As he put this into practice, his business grew steadily and by 1973, he had two shops of his own. One in Beirut’s port district catered to tourists and sailors who rolled off the ships into Beirut, which he mysteriously describes as “a very interesting business,” and the other, a large three floor office and shop at the entrance to the old Beirut Souks.

Two years later, disaster struck as Lebanon descended into civil war. “Business was going well and then the Civil War started in 1975 and I lost everything,” he says, dusting off his hands. Almost all of Atamian’s clients debunked on their outstanding payments and his shops, located in volatile districts near the Green Line, were looted and abandoned. He retreated home, to the hills overlooking Beirut, praying for the fighting to cease. “For two years, I waited but I saw that there was no end to this war.” Atamian then decided that he could no longer sit idly by, he took what little stock he had left to the souks in Jbeil and Jounieh and flogged them all for a pittance. His business liquidated, he was back to square one.

The small amount of money from the fire sale was enough to buy another ticket to Switzerland. Atamian returned, hat in hand, and begged his old friends for a favor. Luckily, they had nothing but respect for the plucky young Beiruti. “They were ready to help and gave me a credit line even, despite the war,” he says. He traveled to Switzerland every other month, each time bringing back more watches in his suitcase. As Atamian astutely observed, the Civil War years were, counter intuitively, prosperous for some: “In the war, true, it was difficult for people like me and others to work but some people were earning money from from it, life continued. There was a lot of money coming into the market.” In turn, he also managed to piece back together the business he had so nearly lost.

In 1980, Atamian bought a miniscule 6 meter square shop in Bourj Hammoud, which is still open today. He hired a single worker as he went around the markets looking for customers. It was around this time that he secured the distribution rights to his first luxury brand, Longines (today, Atamian also carries Blancpain, Breguet, Balmain, Baume & Mercier, Bovet, De Bethune, Dior, Dewitt and also distributes Timezone watches). Later, he bought a small office near the shop and patiently sat out the rest of the war. By the 1990s, it was clear that Atamian had not only managed to survive, he had proved himself to his Swiss contacts, who recommended him to their peers. By January 2000, he had outgrown the office in Bourj Hammoud and moved to the third floor of the Vartanian Center on the Dora Highway

Since then, the Atamian group has expanded its distributor and supplier networks even further. They have cashed in on the explosion of shopping malls and own boutiques for Piaget, IWC Schaffhausen, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Calvin Klein, TAG Heuer and Longines in the Beirut souks — not to mention their boutiques in ABC mall (Ashrafieh & Dbayeh branches), City Mall, Beirut Mall and Beirut City Center. Mr. Jacques is slowly taking a backseat and handing the reins to his eldest son Maher. It is important for the business to keep moving with new energy and new blood, he says. The story of Hagop “Mr. Jacques” Atamian is almost a type of Lebanese parable. It shows that with resilience, determination and hard work, injustice, pain, every obstacle, can be overcome, even if it involves war. As we reach the end of our conversation, smiling wryly, he says, “To get there, you must first be honest in your job.”

June 2, 2015 0 comments

Real estate Real estate 2015: All puffed up Real Estate

Mismatch made in the heavens

by Jeremy Arbid & Thomas Schellen June 2, 2015

written by Jeremy Arbid & Thomas Schellen

As cities go, Beirut has every reason to be regarded as the grand dame of regional urbanity — a proud dowager that stands out among Arab metropolises as queen of style and savoir vivre. But she is filling out like a high school senior, especially around the upper floors of the priciest residential towers. Those epitomes of luxury, construction of which began during the real estate boom five or six years ago, are now finally almost ready for delivery and provide a near full image of the skyline that the Lebanese will have to live with for generations to come.

Whether they are individually perceived as top engineering and architectural accomplishments or mere misshapen tributes to greed, Beirut’s new towers perhaps more than anything illustrate two aspects of the Lebanese economy: the fact that property development is a vitally important activity for the country’s economic well being and the bipolar reality of an economic nation where production is heavily concentrated in the center, but whose productive majority can less and less afford to live in it.

What is new in this picture is that the detrimental split between a rarified class of high end developments and an ignored demand for intelligent and affordable projects has apparently started to impact professional property developers. While they continue to break ground on projects in Beirut, developers today acknowledge that sales in the pricey market segments remain sluggish at best.

[pullquote]“Below $500,000 it is a fantastic market — it’s booming”[/pullquote]

“The market is very rigid now in anything above $2 million. Between $2 million and $500,000 it’s okay, it’s sluggish, but below $500,000 it is a fantastic market — it’s booming,” says Massaad Fares, property developer, consultant and head of the Real Estate Syndicate of Lebanon (formerly an ‘association’, it still goes by REAL).

Essentially, these assessments are estimates and carry credibility because numerous developers share similar views based on their market experience. Beirut based real estate consultancy Ramco, in 2013, produced some rare statistics that quantified the sluggishness of high end demand. From a survey of 65 projects in Beirut — with asking prices starting at $2,800 per square meter — the consulting firm found that of 1,236 such upmarket units that had been completed in 2013, 277 remained unsold by April 2014. The average apartment size of unsold units was 305 square meters with a cumulative value totaling $437,583,544.

All indications are that apartments in Beirut this spring have also been lingering on the market like last summer’s fashion line — prices are now more flexible and, at many developments, reduced. Where before purchasing an apartment in one of Beirut’s prime areas meant paying the asking price, today real estate marketers boast their pricing flexibility as a selling point. It is, as Plus Properties’ marketing manager Amanda Hajjar points out, the “best time to invest in this market because you have negotiation power with the developer.”

The eager sales pitches do not find all that many takers, however. The high starting prices in the capital put homes out of reach for almost all first time buyers, while Lebanese expatriates and wealthy foreigners look to other locales to safekeep their real estate investments. The market has expressed an uneasy dualism for several years. At the upper end of the scale, luxury units in Beirut’s prime areas — downtown, Verdun and Ashrafieh for example — theoretically generate fantastic profit margins but are, in polite terms, selling slowly. At the opposite end, and this means lowbrow developments outside of Beirut, margins are slim but apartments sell like hotcakes.

Developers have of course noticed this trend not just yesterday but several years ago, and have talked in many an interview about the need to shift their strategies. Some champions of luxury real estate used almost every opportunity to speak glowingly about the beauty of developing small units and about the wisdom of undertaking humbler projects some distance from the capital.

All the while, however, the really notable initiatives of the past two or three years were those where branded developers promoted projects in Beirut whose ‘affordable’ unit prices just camouflaged the attempt to achieve even higher profit margins per square meter in built-up areas. A whole wave of such projects were launched in ‘trendy’ areas of the capital whereby the much lower meterage of offered living space made the value propositions of the units’ lower asking prices look, at the very least, doubtful from a buyer’s use value perspective.

[pullquote]Leading developers’ professions of interest in the affordable market are becoming more than theoretical[/pullquote]

Increasingly today, leading developers’ professions of interest in the affordable market are becoming more than theoretical. With growing numbers of unsold units on their books and luxury developments looking like shakier propositions in longer and broader terms, it seems that leaders of the property development industry are finally getting serious about the Lebanese real estate market’s ‘democratization’, meaning development of a developer skill set where project quality and affordability are not absolute opposites.

Despite central bank backed financing being relatively accessible for first time home buyers, many of Lebanon’s high end developers are only in the early stages of learning how to build for this market, where profit margins become tighter and the timing of project delivery is critical. They’re also keeping an eye on Syria — when the raging war will end is anyone’s guess, but reconstruction of that country’s high end housing needs represent a shining opportunity for Lebanese developers.

real-estate-macro-2

Unorganized market

“Today in Lebanon the real estate market is unpredictable,” says general manager of Al Mawarid Real Estate Rania Akhras. Unpredictable market conditions are among the sector’s challenges that organizing bodies REAL and the Real Estate Developers Association — Lebanon (REDAL) hope to address. The real estate sector remains fragmented with only limited planning addressing Lebanon’s housing needs. Part of the issue lies with the government’s almost complete absence as a regulator and policy planner. At the project level, developers encounter difficulty in planning housing projects due to a lack of statistics and, as Fares points out, current indicators — like real estate transactions and cement deliveries — are not accurate and are inadequate to use for planning purposes.

Both Fares and Namir Cortas, head of REDAL, say the lack of statistics is a weakness. “I cannot write a feasibility study … [I] don’t have reliable references,” Fares says, with Cortas noting data is needed to “understand what the sector is paying and understand how it affects other sectors because [real estate is] the central sector — we affect just about everybody.” While the two recognize it as a fundamental need they both say neither organization has the resources to compile the right statistics.

In other ways both REAL and REDAL are making headway towards the professionalization of the real estate sector. Fares, at REAL, is focusing on improving the home buyer’s purchasing experience by standardizing the broker profession. “It’s so important that they know how to sell an apartment … Your client is so important because he brings the bread and you have to be honest and give him the right information and advice,” he says. To do so, REAL has teamed up with the American University of Beirut to offer courses and certification for realtors, a planned prerequisite for REAL membership. Formed in 2013 REDAL has focused largely on issues of taxation because, Cortas says, when it comes to the real estate sector “such a big proportion of it is indirect. In other words you suffer it before you realize the profit.”

Unsold Luxury

The slowdown at the highest end of the market means many units that have or will come online remain unsold. Fares says there are some 1,000 unsold units at a value above $2 million, with an estimated cumulative value totaling $3 billion. While that might look to some like a glut in the market Fares nonchalantly reasons that, “The real estate market in Lebanon is around $6–7 billion per year, so $3 billion in the sector is not really dangerous. These type of units — this sector of the market — is normally developed by well to do developers so they can sustain it.” Similarly, Akhras agreed that this money sitting in the market is part of the attractiveness of investing in real estate — “There is cash to be stored,” she says.

The ability of real estate to serve as a safe store of wealth is of course well established in Lebanon. Many projects in the country are not leveraged because the owners execute them through project companies whose capital consists of a mix of owned land and an investor’s financial contributions. Professional market studies and demand assessments are often not a priority when these projects are designed because the shareholders have no exposure to bank loans and can simply wait, sitting on unsold completed units until the day that somebody meets their asking price.

Affordable segment

When it comes to designing more complex projects with tight margins that include the need for leverages, on the other hand, different business models and other skill sets are needed. That may be why it takes market players more time to venture into downmarket specializations.

“There is certainly a need [and] there is certainly a shortage in housing for the market at affordable prices,” says Cortas, also the director of Estates, a property developer. Demand outstrips supply at the affordable end of the Lebanese market yet few options exist for home buyers in the city. “Today the market is outside Beirut, not inside … [In some places] you can buy an apartment for $1,000 per square meter. You can’t buy anything in Beirut for this price,” says Fares.

One of the main concerns for this segment of the market is the government’s limited involvement offering no holistic policies that encourage the construction of affordable housing. Financing of homes has nonetheless been possible and has recently become more doable for prospective home buyers — but only because of central bank initiatives that have brought benefits to mortgage based borrowing first in 2009–2011 and then again since 2013, due to Banque du Liban’s stimulus package.

[pullquote]“If it wasn’t for the stimulus plan we would be in deep shit — it’s as simple as that”[/pullquote]

“[Riad Salameh] is, with all objectivity, the only government representative working on a productive economy — everybody else is not working on a productive economy,” Fares says, remarking that, “If it wasn’t for the stimulus plan we would be in deep shit — it’s as simple as that.” Cortas points out that “The central bank has realized this particular sector of the market is totally dependent on the availability of mortgages and a system of relatively low interest [rates].”

A Syrian future

It would be inconceivable to have business confidence in Lebanon’s economic future without some innate personal optimism and willingness to embrace risk. In the case of the current property market, this seems to be shaping out as wagers on a reconstruction boom in Syria. Of course there is no current outlook for an end of violence and armed conflict in the neighboring country, but phases of rebuilding may intermingle with the ongoing conflict, at least in speculations driven by the Lebanese experience of the country’s earlier conflict that lasted more than 15 years.

Both Cortas and Fares agree that the reconstruction of Syria, once it begins, will be a huge boon for the Lebanese. “I believe that the reconstruction of Iraq and Syria will only happen through Lebanon,” says Fares, with Cortas adding that, “We are poised as Lebanese developers to be very effective in the reconstruction and development of Syria.”

This is not to be understood as a wild dream of doing megaprojects in the big neighboring country. These projects would be government driven, financed by international programs, and carried out by large international contractors and developers, Cortas says. However, he and Fares both point to the potential for projects outside the mass reconstruction needs — such as building new luxury apartments and offices for wealthy Syrians — as lucrative activities where Lebanese developers will have a huge edge once Syria’s war subsides.

A surge in Syrian rebuilding and development activities might even wipe away quite a few of the headaches that plague the Lebanese property market today. And bring a few new, different ones. A non conflict dividend of Syrian development would generally translate into a boost for the Lebanese economy and any unsold property stock would quickly find demand, for example.

On the other hand, Fares fears that reconstructing Syria will drain the supply of unskilled labor, expert manpower and even machinery from Lebanon. He says, “It is going to be very difficult for Lebanon because we will not find an engineer here anymore — they will all be going there. We will not be able to find any Syrian construction workers — they will all go back.” This would mean the current buyer’s market would flip into a property seller’s market in Lebanon, possibly big time.

June 2, 2015 0 comments

Real estate Real estate 2015: All puffed up Real Estate

Walking towards the light

by Jeremy Arbid June 2, 2015

written by Jeremy Arbid

Instead of hoping for good political news in Lebanon today, property hunters should just trust their fortunes. The country is much more stable than it looks, and smart money has every chance to find good real estate buys. At the same time, there are few bright spots for sellers. The uncertainty in the upper end of the Lebanese market has developers scratching their heads — their business models overwhelmingly depend on developing pricey new projects in order to maintain economic growth and cash flows. But with sales in that segment of the market remaining ‘rigid’, many are now looking to diversify their revenue streams.

The mid to lower end of the market — the affordable housing segment — is booming with demand, partly satisfied by mortgages backed by the central bank’s monetary stimulus. Even some developers who were previously locked into luxury projects are beginning to look at tapping into this market segment. The high cost of land in Beirut, along with buyers demanding homes accessible to arterial roads, point to areas like the suburbs above and below Baabda and around Metn to serve this demand for housing. Executive spoke with several developers who are currently planning or have already established companies to serve first time home buyers, but none spoke of shovel ready projects.

Lebanon is in desperate need of affordable housing options, but the government is ill positioned to coordinate the response. The segment is a cornerstone of the real estate market and the government’s lack of attention has thrown Lebanon into a housing crisis. Even the amended rent law, if it passes this year, is doomed to be ineffectual because Lebanon must pass a budget that considers funding for those tenants who cannot afford to pay the increase — the 2015 draft budget does not.

Housing needs in the country are not limited only to the Lebanese. Refugees — predominantly Syrian, but also Palestinian, Iraqi and Sudanese — also need access to cheap housing. A lack of governmental regulation has seen rental prices soar, followed by illegal evictions when those refugees who could afford shelter ran out of money.

In the end, Lebanon’s real estate market is looking at a long adjustment period before the ship might right. On the one hand, continued regional instability and the war in neighboring Syria have driven investors away and, as a whole, depressed the local economy. On the other, Lebanon’s political impasse has only compounded the situation. The stimulus offered by the central bank, only a quasi governmental actor, has, by many developer accounts, been the only force keeping the market afloat.

June 2, 2015 0 comments

Gadgets Tech

Starting from zero

by Louis Parks June 1, 2015

written by Louis Parks

Hosni Auji and Majd Akkar are the sort of people you can’t help but wish well. Auji, a graphic designer by training, and Akkar, a 3D artist and coder, had always hankered to create something of their own. Longtime friends, they joined forces a few years ago for a competition run by the Dutch embassy in Beirut. They later quit their jobs and worked odd hours in order to create Zero Age, their acclaimed indie puzzler game.

Sitting with Auji, you can’t escape his sense of bewilderment. Two and a half years of his life have been turned upside down, largely by a girl in a wizard’s cape and a pointy hat. A freshly minted game designer today, he says, “My whole life I was interested in games, but when I was younger it just wasn’t viable. You got these games, they came from Japan, you don’t know how they’re made, you just play them. It didn’t seem like a career path you could consider.” And neither was film directing — he had headed to Prague to study film after graduating from AUB in graphic design — “[it involved] too much man management, I was too scattered,” as he puts it. So he took the pragmatic course and returned to Beirut, where he worked for the design studio Penguin Cube.

Over time, Auji began to think about game design, as did Akkar. A catalyst appeared on the horizon when, in 2012, the Dutch embassy managed a game contest and the pair dived in. They created a demo, which gained them entrance to the competition and then, they took the leap. They quit their jobs.

Five months later, the two had completed their game, it moved from PC to iPad and it didn’t resemble the demo at all. They had a concept down, and the seeds of something greater. They won. With the $10,000 prize money, the friends gave it a shot, polishing it to become Zero Age.

After four months, and many changes of course, the concept was locked down. Zero Age is, in Auji’s words, “A 3D puzzle adventure for the iPad, but it requires lateral and spatial thinking.” It’s simple, but also brutally hard. You move a small girl dressed as a wizard around an isometric grid, on which there are blocks that shift in certain directions. You use the blocks and your various powers to move. It’s the sort of game where a single level can take hours and progress is often glacial. It’s also addictive. The way they designed it is as follows: they decided on an interface, whereby you tap on a node to move things around, later adding the concept of fixed nodes. They created puzzles, added an ability, tested it, added another ability and tested again, until they were combining multiple functions in one puzzle zone and elements from separate puzzles to create new, interesting levels.

Creating the puzzles and ironing out kinks was a laborious process and the game was increasingly deconstructed. Days ran into weeks, weeks into months. By December of 2013, the pair expected to launch in April of 2014, but for every bug they removed, another appeared, “The task list just grew, you fix one problem, you add two more, it just never ended,” said Auji. At that point, they hadn’t marketed the game at all, and there was no audio.

These delays led to their musician dropping out and, desperate for sound, Akkar came upon the idea of using music by Sergei Rachmaninoff. “There was no money for licensing, nothing!” said Auji. Rachmaninoff’s works were in the public domain and the licensing fee was relatively small. The name also came late in the game — they settled on Zero Age, a term that refers to a stage in the evolution of a star, for reasons that will become apparent when you play the game.

With October 2014 came the time to publish. Submitting to the App Store is a fraught time, developers can face rejection if Apple isn’t satisfied and Auji and Akkar were novices. “After two weeks, we got an email telling us the App was being reviewed. Forty five minutes later, bang, an email saying it’s been approved.” Auji couldn’t believe it. He assumed, incorrectly, that the process was automated.

It took 20 minutes to find the first bug. Auji’s parents downloaded the game and he saw a graphical glitch. It didn’t appear on his machine, nor Akkar’s. “Majd got on it, he had an idea about what was wrong. He did it really quickly, but then we had to submit the patch to Apple and wait again,” he said. It was approved and Zero Age had a day zero patch, the developer’s nightmare.

Emails flew and Pocket Gamer covered them, a few others too. Sales sat at 20 or 30 a day. One morning, Auji woke up and checked their statistics: they had sold 300 copies in a day. It could only be Apple. “A week after launch, we were on the App Store’s main page. We were Game of the Week,” he said, eyes wide, “It was crazy!” Sales hit 400 a day for a week. News sites got in touch and as discounts drove further sales, they were shortlisted for Casual Connect Europe’s Indie Game Awards. In no time, they were all over the internet. At present, Zero Age sits at 72,000 downloads and has brought in around $10,000. Sales currently hover around $300 per month — the game business isn’t necessarily a money making one.

Auji smiles, “It’s not enough for two years work, so, we’re planning on releasing it on Steam, the PC and Mac distribution system, and Apple’s Mac store.” The future looks promising from here: a launch, on other platforms, supported by a marketing drive, is sure to bring in additional revenue, but it’s perhaps the hints as to what’s possible that are most interesting.

“Once we’ve done Steam and Apple, I’ve got a few side projects. Majd wants to do a fighter,” says Auji. They’d do things differently next time around; “we’d certainly market more,” he says. The learning curve was steep, but as a first step, Zero Age has to be seen as a success. The two have proved they can create a fun, visually stunning game, and the confidence it has given the pair suggests a bright future, once the dust finally settles.

June 1, 2015 1 comment

Editorial

A hellish limbo, a darker future

by Yasser Akkaoui June 1, 2015

written by Yasser Akkaoui

There’s nothing like entrepreneurial energy — if it’s there, you feel it as soon as you walk in the room. That’s what I felt when I recently addressed the Start Up Lebanon conference in New York. The room was buzzing with creative talent — our talent — ready to storm the American startup scene.

Why were our kids doing this in New York instead of Beirut? The most glaring reason: US officials and executives really believe in young entrepreneurs. They listened intently to these fresh voices — which made the presenters even more serious and more determined to realize their ideas. Who does that here in Lebanon? I can think of just one person, our central banker. Every other official is too worried about shoring up their own personal fiefdom to see the extraordinary potential in our youth. So our youth leave — for Dubai, Paris, San Francisco and New York — and build the future there, for the Emirates, France and America.

This egregious negligence is not a partisan or sectarian issue. It doesn’t matter if they’re named Aoun or Berri or Geagea or Hariri or Jumblatt — they’re all guilty of letting our nation waste away as they plot to gain more power for themselves and their families. And this tug of war has had far reaching economic consequences. In addition to sacrificing our best and brightest to other countries, our so-called leaders — a misnomer if ever there was one — have saddled our country with a hybrid economic system that simply cannot work.

With the collapse of governance and devaluation of the lira in the 1980s, our historical French model became untenable. Postwar, most leaders recognized this, and Rafik Hariri set our country on the path towards the American model of an economy driven by a vibrant private sector. But reform stalled. State owned enterprises were not privatized. Government ministers began to view their portfolios as belonging to them — not the people. The result? A strange, hybrid economic model whereby we expect private enterprise to drive the economy, but keep it so heavily burdened with bureaucracy that this becomes impossible.

We must choose one model or the other: either complete the reforms begun in the 1990s, or revert back to a French style system, complete with independent, activist unions. Our current economic dysfunction is not just untenable, it’s morbid. The longer we continue ignoring this problem, the more young talent will leave our shores for brighter futures abroad.

That means a darker future for Lebanon. And that’s precisely where our ‘leaders’ are taking us.

June 1, 2015 1 comment