Mounib Hammoud is the chief operating officer at Solidere International (SI). With SI partnering with Egypt’s Six of October Development and Investment company (SODIC) for megaprojects in Cairo’s new Eastown and Westown areas, Executive sat down with Hammoud to discuss how he’s bringing a little slice of Beirut to Egypt.
- What attracted you to invest in Egypt?
[SODIC] came to us and we spoke together and discovered that we share the same vision and same philosophy of development. They gave us a very attractive entry deal… Egypt has 80 million people, positive growth and there is a constant improvement in the purchasing power. Their real estate market was still at its early stages.
- Why are you creating “urban centers” for East and West Cairo?
For the past 50 years [the Egyptians] have been building cities, residential cities. Everybody gets up, gets in the car and drives to Cairo to go to work and come back in the evening. They live in constant, indefinite traffic jams. There are two cities coming up in East and West Cairo. There are residential compounds and office parks and shopping malls. It means you need your car to get from one place to another; it’s all very separated. We went to the planning authority and said: “allow us to anchor this new city of 2.5 million people with a city center.” What is a city center? It has buildings along streets, it has sidewalks, it has public spaces. It has a mixed-use environment with offices, residential units, hotels, retail outlets, entertainment, restaurants, police stations, post office — this is a city center. This is where people can live, play, entertain and work.
- Given the competition in Egypt’s real estate market, is there still room for more development?
In the next 10 years 70 percent of Egyptians will be below 30 years old. They have around 500,000 new marriages every year. There is constant demand for new apartments and new houses. [Also,] many people are trying to improve their quality of life because of the increase in wealth and the opening of the economy.
- Will SI’s projects in Egypt look like Solidere’s downtown Beirut project?
We are applying our standards to both cities… It is going to be something they haven’t seen in Egypt and it’s going to be built to a Beirut-like standard [but] we’re not going to transport Beirut there – it’s going to be adapted to Egyptian taste.
- Solidere’s Beirut project has met some criticism that it has priced downtown out of the reach of everyone but the elite. Millions of people — not all of them rich — are expected to live in East and West Cairo. Is the scenario going to be different?
The structure of Egypt is different than in Lebanon and the prices in Egypt are different… the cost of construction is cheaper and the cost of labor is cheaper. Beirut is a special city. Beirut is a city where land is seriously scarce. If we hadn’t had the wars, you would have had Monaco-like prices [there].
- What is driving people from Cairo city center?
The problem with [central] Cairo is with the growing population. Cairo has 500,000 extra people coming every year. The infrastructure is the same. The only thing that changes is the number of people. So people who can afford it are moving outside Cairo and reorganizing their lives either in East or West Cairo.
