Changing skylines: Karachi to get the country’s tallest building, again

Ocean Towers, formerly known as Sofitel Towers, is 393 feet high. PHOTO: AFP

Ocean Towers, formerly known as Sofitel Towers, is 393 feet high and will house a shopping mall, food courts, corporate offices and a business club, said the project’s sponsors. The 28-floor skyscraper has bypassed the 381-feet tall MCB Tower on II Chundrigar road as the tallest building in the country.

A formal inauguration of the towers took place on Saturday by Minister for Overseas Pakistanis Dr Farooq Sattar.

The chief executive officer of Siddiqsons Group and Triple Tree Associates, Tariq Rafi, said that the skyscraper was completed at a cost of Rs7 billion. The building materials used in its construction conform to the standards set by the Karachi Building Control Authority, enabling it to withstand earthquake shocks.

The towers were initially supposed to house the Sofitel chain of hotels, but they withdrew because of the violence in Karachi. The managing partner of the project, Abdul Rehman Naqi, said that a popular supermarket chain in the city would be the first store in the towers and would open its doors to the public, hopefully by May 25. “The upper half of the building, which will house corporate offices, will be completed by June 20. But as we have limited office space, I am not really worried about the other mall-cum-office projects being constructed elsewhere in the city.”

Published in The Express Tribune, February 21^st, 2012.