Phnom Penh:2 Skyscrapers!

[GWR]

Skyscraper to change city skyline

By Vong Sokheng

Another South Korean company announced plans to build a city skyscraper, this one to begin construction next week at the heavily trafficked corner of Sihanouk and Monivong Blvds.

The South Korean Yon Woo Co., Ltd developer said it is investing $240 million in a glitzy high tech 42-story building Gold Tower, which will have apartments and office and commercial space.

The building is expected to be completed by 2011.

The company received its approvals from the government in May 2007.

The news comes on top of the announcement by Korea's GS Engineering and Construction Company, that it will start construction in June on a 53-story building near the Russian Embassy in the Tonle Bassac riverfront area. It is supposed to be finished in 2012.

"We see that the skyscraper market is getting interest from Cambodian people because the price of the land is very expensive now,"" said Sry Thamarong, personal advisor to Prime Minister Hun Sen.

He said the prime minister is encouraging more skyscrapers.

"The 53-story is the tallest, but in the future there will be taller ones." The Yon Woo Co. Ltd. held a ceremony to launch construction January 24.

The architectural drawings for Gold Tower were done in Korea.
Yon Woo is the developer and was in charge of searching for the right site. It has hired a separate contractor.

Company officials said the contractor will employ about 300 Cambodian workers and Korean engineers during the construction period.

Yon Woo official Kim Tea Yon said the company is committed to contributing to the success of the Cambodian economy as well as to its stakeholders, who expect profits.

Collaborators in the project are DaeHan Real Estate Trust, a fund management firm, and Hanil Engineering & Construction Co Ltd, which initiated the construction of the first phase of the large Camko City planned development on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, the officials said. Korean investment is involved there also.

In a statement, the company said: "The Yon Woo Co.,Ltd will become the project for the image of the international capital by making a new skyline in the city of Phnom Penh ."

Investment from Korea in the past year has been picking up fast, according to Sangkwang Lee, Commercial Attache of the Embassy of Republic of Korea in Phnom Penh.

He told the Post that Korean total investment in Cambodia since 1992 totaled $897 million, but in just nine months of 2007, it had already reached $502 million.

.....

Im Chhun Lim, Minister of Land Management, Urban Planing and Construction, said in his speech at the launch that the government received more than 1,500 requests for construction projects worth $1.5 billion in the first nine months of 2007.

Non-specific link:
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/

[GWR]

http://rspas.anu.edu.au/rmap/newmandala/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/urban-development.jpg
[Artist's Impression: New Mandala/Maylee]

Thanks to Maylee for sending me this new vision of urban development in Phnom Penh.
http://rspas.anu.edu.au/rmap/newmandala/2008/02/20/room-with-a-view/

[GWR]

http://rspas.anu.edu.au/rmap/newmandala/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/urban-development.jpg
[Artist's Impression: New Mandala/Maylee]

http://rspas.anu.edu.au/rmap/newmandala/2008/02/20/room-with-a-view/

http://bp0.blogger.com/_8up7h6T0Kzc/R9N-FoVRQrI/AAAAAAAAEeA/r5JQkMZPbu8/s320/Gold+Towers+%28Yonwoo+Inc.%29.jpg
[Photo: http://ki-media.blogspot.com/ - S. Korea Yonwoo's Gold Towers]

Cambodia's thriving real estate market enriches the elite

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP): An old hospital was razed to make way for Phnom Penh's tallest building _ a 42-story twin condominium tower. A garbage-strewn slum became prime real estate after police evicted its dwellers to a parched rice field outside the capital.

Cambodia is experiencing a construction boom fueled by foreign investment, particularly by South Koreans, and buying and selling among the country's few nouveaux riche _ while leaving the poor majority behind. Shopping malls and tall apartment buildings are sprouting up, transforming the capital's landscape that once bore the charm of colonial French-styled villas but resembled a ghost town at the fall of the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime nearly 30 years ago.

Political stability and robust economic growth of nearly 10 percent have lured investors to the real estate market that has seen prices surge over the last few years _ though they are still lower than in neighboring Vietnam or Thailand.

"Cambodia was sleeping for many years and now it's waking up,'' said Claire Brown, managing director of Britain-based Claire Brown Realty who began buying and selling property in Phnom Penh two years ago.

"Everybody wants to get a piece of the action,'' she said by phone. "The time to get in is now because soon it's going to be too late.''

Prime city land prices have tripled over the last two years to US$3,000 (euro2,000) per square meter. Those kinds of returns have drawn rich and middle-class Cambodians, as well as those living abroad.

"In buying and selling land, they could get profit 100 or 200 percent a year, if they make the right bet on the right location,'' said Dith Channa, the sale manager of CPL Cambodia Properties Ltd., a Phnom Penh-based real estate agency.

But the soaring real estate market is also widening the gap between the rich and the poor.

"Phnom Penh city is getting modern every day _ of course for the wealthy,'' said Chhorn Et, a former slum dweller now living with hundreds of others in a village in the middle of rice field about 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the capital.

"The government swept us away because they regarded us as very unpleasant for their eyes,'' said the 34-year-old woman who scavenges for discarded cans and bottles to sell for a living.

The flourishing property market is also happening in the shadow of problems of land rights disputes that, in recent years, have often pitted the poor against wealthy developers with links to the Cambodian political establishment.

"We're moving toward possibly about 10 percent of the population owning 90 percent of the land in Cambodia,'' said Naly Pilorge, director of the nonprofit human rights group Licadho.

That could fan social and political unrest, she and others have warned.

The biggest projects are being funded by South Korean investors and companies, which have been the leading investors in Cambodia following the resumption of diplomatic ties between the two countries in 1997.

Investment and tourists from South Korea have surged following a 2006 visit to Cambodia by former President Roh Moo-hyun.

World City Co. Ltd., a South Korean company, is investing US$2 billion (euro1.3 billion) to build a "satellite'' urban complex called Camko City on a 120-hectare (300-acre) area on the northwest side of Phnom Penh. The project, the single biggest foreign direct investment in Cambodia to date, will include residential, commercial and public facilities _ villas, condos, trade and financial centers, office buildings, shopping centers, hotels, schools and hospitals.

Meanwhile, at a busy corner leading up to the city's landmark Independence Monument, an old government hospital has been torn down to make way for a 42-story condominium and shopping complex worth about US$250 million (euro162 million). That's going to dramatically change Phnom Penh's skyline, where the tallest building now is a 15-story hotel.

It is going to be the first luxury residential building and tallest structure in Cambodia, said Kim Tae-Yeon, chairman of Yon Woo Inc., a South Korean developer.

Kim said the towers will have about 500 units of apartments, office space and retail shops with price tags ranging from US$112,000 (euro72,647) to US$1.8 million (euro1.17 million) a unit. Construction will start next month and take 3 1/2 years to complete, but Kim said nearly half of the units have already been bought.

In recent years, Siem Reap, a northwestern town near the famed Angkor Wat ruins, also has seen a frenzy of hotel and guesthouse construction for the growing numbers of tourists.

Thrilled with the boom, Prime Minister Hun Sen has said it has been made possible by the political stability he has brought. In a recent speech he warned that if he is not re-elected in July elections, property prices could nosedive.

"It was a threat, a dirty trick to gain votes,'' said Son Chhay, an opposition party lawmaker.

Son Chhay and some human rights workers, including Pilorge of the human rights group Licadho, believe that the boom is partly fueled by people laundering money from illegal logging, drug trafficking and tax evasion by plowing the cash into the real estate market.

"This is not going to be healthy for the Cambodian economy,'' Son Chhay says.

There are also concerns that the rapid price gains are creating a bubble that will eventually pop.

Eric Sidgwick, senior economist at the Asian Development Bank office in Phnom Penh, said the real estate market has been "driven by a combination of genuine demand for business-related and residential construction,'' as well as a growing population, increased urbanization and speculation.

Still, there were "reasons to be concerned about the recent increase in real estate prices and the dangers of further inflating a speculation-led bubble,'' he said in an e-mail. He declined to comment about any possible link between money laundering and the property market boom.

Meanwhile, poor residents like Chhorn Et, the former slum dweller who was moved outside the capital, are left to cope with a stark reality in their new village, which has no running water or sewage system.

Although each family has been given a small piece of land, they complain of the lack of means to support their livelihoods. They have to travel daily to the capital to do odd jobs as motorbike taxi drivers, construction workers or scavenge for bottles and cans to sell to buy food.

Many of them are too poor to afford a latrine and have to use a nearby rice field as a toilet, said 37-year-old Mom Somaly, a mother of five children.

Pointing to a distant land-for-sale sign, she said "soon they may not even have a field to use as toilet any longer.''
http://biz.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2008/3/9/business/20080309134750&sec=business

[GWR]

Friday, March 14, 2008
Cambodia breaks ground on first skyscraper [the Gold Tower 42]
March 14, 2008
AFP
http://bp0.blogger.com/_76xUgRgjZYM/R5i_iPcurpI/AAAAAAAADHs/sMQH_KooxAY/s400/Twin+GOld+Towers+%28BBC%29.jpg
[Photo: AFP - http://ki-media.blogspot.com ]

PHNOM PENH - CAMBODIAN officials on Friday broke ground on the country's first skyscraper, a 42-storey tower that when completed will dwarf all other buildings in the low-rise capital Phnom Penh.

The 192-metre-tall Gold Tower 42 project is being touted by Cambodia's leaders as a symbol of the country's galloping economy, which has averaged 11 per cent growth over the past three years.

'The tower is the highest building in the history of Cambodia's capital,' said Deputy Prime Minister Sok An, adding: 'It's a symbol of economic growth.'

The 240-million-dollar high-rise, which will include a library and medical facilities along with luxury apartments, is backed by South Korea's Yon Woo company and is expected to be completed by 2011.

Company officials say at least half the available units have already sold.

'When completed, the building will bring all of us good life and success,' Yon Woo chairman Kim Tae Yeon told a crowd of about 600 high-ranking Cambodian and South Korean officials.

Cambodia has climbed back from decades of civil unrest to emerge as one of the region's most vibrant economies, marked by an unprecedented building boom that is radically changing the face of this once-sleepy capital.

At least two other high-rise buildings are planned, along with another South Korean-backed project, the sprawling Camko City planned community located on the outskirts of Phnom Penh.
http://ki-media.blogspot.com/2008/03/cambodia-breaks-ground-on-first.html

[GWR]

Gold Tower selling fast despite rumored pullout
Written by Meas Sokchea
Friday, 02 May 2008

Five months after going on the market, 75 percent of the units in Gold Tower 42 have been sold, the developers of Cambodia’s first skyscraper say, denying suggestions that the project’s backers have pulled out of one of the country’s most ambitious construction efforts.

Reports widely circulated in the Khmer-language press say the project has stalled after its South Korean developers abandoned construction, leaving hundreds of depositors in limbo.

“A rumor is only a rumor,” said Lee Sun Hum, director of the Yon Woo company, which is building the $240-million high-rise.

He compared the project to a slandered celebrity, saying, “Our company, being famous, must suffer from rumors created by others – it is not correct information.”

When completed in 2011, Gold Tower 42, which will include a library and medical facilities along with luxury apartments, will dwarf every other building in this low-slung capital.

Cambodia’s leaders are touting it as a symbol of the country’s revival after decades of civil strife.

But the 192-meter tower is only one of a number of large construction projects underway amid an unprecedented building boom that has increased competition among developers courting both foreign buyers and the capital’s emerging middle class.

Some 30 percent of Gold Tower’s buyers are from overseas, said Yon Woo sales manager San Sokseiha, adding that the building’s units were also popular with Cambodian businessmen and high-ranking government officials.

“Many floors have sold out even before construction started,” he told the Post, describing reports of the project’s turmoil as coming from competing developers.

“These rumors are not correct – there is no problem for the company. It has not abandoned the project.”
– PP Deputy Governor Pa Socheat Vong

Municipal officials also dismissed the rumors about Gold Tower 42, with Phnom Penh Deputy Governor Pa Socheat Vong saying, “This project is still going on, but it takes a long time to construct.”

“These rumors are not correct – there is no problem for the company. It has not abandoned the project,” he told the Post.

Many buyers appear undeterred by the whiff of scandal surrounding Gold Tower 42, saying they regarded the units as a good investment.

“With high buildings like this, Cambodia will attract investors,” said one woman who gave her name as Chakrya, adding that she recently bought one condominium for more than $500,000.
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1206&Itemid=52

[GWR]

Also featured Frontpage today:
http://www.2bangkok.com

Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Cambodians may not have enough to eat ... but Cambodia will soon have a 52-story tower


http://bp0.blogger.com/_8up7h6T0Kzc/SFi0_upUDFI/AAAAAAAAFzk/wlWwNKHXE7U/s400/52-story+tower+%28AFP%29.jpg
[Photo: KI Media - People pass a model of the International Finance Complex in Phnom Penh which will be Cambodia's highest building.]

Wednesday June 18, 2008
Cambodia breaks ground on its highest skyscraper

PHNOM PENH (AFP) — Cambodia on Wednesday broke ground for what will be the country's highest skycraper, a 52-storey tower slated to become the "landmark" of the low-rise capital Phnom Penh.

The one-billion-dollar International Finance Complex (IFC) is being backed by South Korea's GS E&C company and is expected to be completed in 2012.

The project is being hailed by Cambodia's leaders as a symbol of the country's galloping economy, which has averaged 11 percent growth over the past three years.

"IFC is the highest building in the history of Cambodia's capital and is a symbol of the economic growth in Cambodia," said Deputy Prime Minister Sok An.

Kevin K.R. Kim, the Korean firm's CEO, said the project will contribute to the development of Cambodia and become "the landmark of Phnom Penh city."

The site, located near the Tonle Bassac River, includes plans for offices, 275 serviced apartments, a convention centre, an international school and six-high-rise apartment buildings accommodating 1,064 units.

The Southeast Asian nation in March broke ground on the country's first skyscraper, a 42-storey tower.

Cambodia has climbed back from decades of civil unrest to emerge as one of the region's most vibrant economies, marked by an unprecedented building boom that is radically changing the face of this once-sleepy capital.
Read the Reader's Comments:
http://ki-media.blogspot.com/2008/06/cambodians-may-not-have-enough-to-eat.html