World’s tallest tower reaches 37th floor

16 March 2016

Kingdom Holding revealed that the 1km tower had reached its 37th floor. It will overtake the 830-metre Burj Khalifa once complete with a gross floor area of 245,000 sqm.

Saudi Arabia’s 1km Kingdom tower, which has just been renamed Jeddah Tower will be the world’s tallest building when it opens in 2018. More than a fifth of its construction is now complete. Kingdom Holding, which owns a third of developer Jeddah Economic Company (JEC) said in a press release that the tower had reached the 37th floor.

JEC, whose chairman is Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, has not revealed how many habitable floors the tower will reach. Chicago-based Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat estimated it will be 167 floors tall when it is completed in 2018, meaning the tower is 22 per cent complete with two years to go.

The announcement comes as JEC marked the establishment of the Alinma Jeddah Economic City Fund, which was set up by the developer after it secured sharia-compliant financing of $960m (SR3.6bn) from Alinma Bank last December to fund the project.

Mounib Hammoud, CEO of Jeddah Economic Company said: “With financing in place, we are now on our way to achieve our set goals and to complete building Jeddah Tower and the infrastructure of Jeddah Economic City as per the five year plan developed by Jeddah Economic Company.”

Jeddah Tower, which will overtake the 830-metre Burj Khalifa in Dubai as the world’s tallest tower when it is officially launched, will have a gross floor area of 245,000 square metres and include offices, a 200-room Four Seasons Hotel, 121 serviced apartments and 360 residential apartments, Reuters reported in May 2015.

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