“We can’t keep the blinds open” said Fadi Khoury, chairman of the once magnificent St. Georges Hotel. “They will be able to see me and I can’t risk that.” After more than a decade of fighting, often very publicly, with Solidere and the Beirut municipality, both in the courts and in the press, Khoury initially comes off as determined to press ahead with his vision of reconstructing what was once Beirut’s, and the region’s, star attraction for the rich and famous. “I will not sell out, never!” he told Executive.
While the last two scraps have kept up the image of Fadi the fighter, the culmination of so many years of battling has clearly left him fatigued even as he pulls out map after map of what has, for him, been an exhaustive exercise in the complications, contradictions and “injustices” of Beirut’s rebirth.
Khoury acknowledges that the long-running saga on rebuilding the St. Georges has also taken its toll on his personal fortune. Several years ago, the authorities ripped up the hotel’s berths that were bringing him an average of $1.5 million in annual boat docking fees. Shortly thereafter, he had to endure various municipal obstacles to fully operating his beach club – his main source of revenue. Now, he says, “My revenues have been cut to so little. I have virtually no way to make a profit.” A pathway to the oceanfront, a reduced sea wall, his old piers and permission to build are all that he wants, he says. The crusading sound bytes of public space, “just compensation” and “anti-monopolistic development” would all stop there – he is, after all, a businessman.
As he adjusts one of his many remote cameras from his desk to close in on what he calls an illegal Solidere office trailer near the St Georges, Khoury adds, softly, almost to himself, “I don’t know how long this can continue.”
