Update: Here’s a link to the price list [Here]. Thank you Yasmine!
It would be interesting to see if this technology will pick up in Lebanon. I am not sure how much it costs and there’s no mention of the prices on the Bakery’s [website], so I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
Last month, Mar Mikhael became home to the Middle East’s first 3D printing shop – a walk in ‘fab lab’ allowing customers to print their digital designs as solid 3D objects.
The store’s founder and principal, Guillaume Credoz, explained the technology to NOW using the example of a Beirut taxi driver’s decades-old Mercedes.
“Say a part in this car has blown, but spares are not made any more – not in Lebanon, not anywhere else in the world. The only other that exists is in the car of a collector in the States. We could have this part scanned to create a digital file, receive the file in an email, and print a perfect copy in a durable material. The process could be complete in a day or two, and the customer can drive away.”
It was around 1 pm when I got to Beirut City Centre and traffic was relatively reasonable. The entrance to the parking was crowded so I didn’t bother wait to park inside and found a spot easily in the large parking lots (not yet paved with asphalt) outside the mall.
The mall inside is huge. It consists of four levels with over 200 stores. The big stores open or set to open are Carrefour on the Ground Level and Level 1, CentrePoint on the Ground Level, H&M on Level1 and Marks & Spencer on Level2. You can check out the full list of stores [Here].
Level3 is the Terrace and is not yet open but I was able to check it out and take few pictures. As you can see from the pictures below, Roadster Diner will open next to the Cheese Cake Factory and Shake Shack. Vox Cinemas are also still under construction and look nice. I also spotted Nasma Restaurant (Previously known as Basma) and P.F. Chang’s.
Here are few pictures of the Beirut City Centre that opened yesterday. There are a lot of shops and restaurants that are still not open such as the Cheese Cake Factory, Shake Shack and Fat Burger but they are coming very soon from what I heard. Carrefour was the main attraction yesterday as they were offering a lot of items with great discounts.
I am passing by this weekend so I will have more pictures and information to share.
Majid Al Futtaim Properties announced today that the long-awaited Beirut City Centre will open its doors to the Lebanese community on April 4th. This will Al Futtaim’s first mall in the Levant region.
Here are few things that will be found at Beirut City Centre that I have mentioned in earlier posts:
- Lebanon’s first Carrefour hypermarket.
- The first Magic Planet family entertainment centre.
- A state-of-the-art VOX Cinemas multiplex.
- Victoria’s Secret
- The Cheesecake Factory
- ShakeShack
- FatBurger
More importantly, Beirut City Center will create around 1,200 permanent retail positions once open. I will keep you posted once I visit it (Hopefully on the launching) and try ShakeShack and The Cheesecake Factory.
Update: I just noticed Mustapha already mentioned the good news.
I met two guys from PayPal at the ArabNet conference today and they informed me that Lebanon will soon be authorized on PayPal (They didn’t say how soon though). I asked them whether Lebanon is blocked due to political reasons and they said that it is not related and that there are many countries in the Middle East not yet allowed to use the service. In fact, even Russia is not yet on their authorized countries’ list but will be very soon.
While reading Executive Magazine’s interview with MAF Properties senior mall manager Sleiman Mallat, I noticed that he talked about a new mall planned for Waterfront City in Dbayyeh, the Waterfront City Centre. I couldn’t find further details on Waterfrontcity.com related to this mall though.
Q:You have much experience in the mall business in Lebanon, including working with the ABC Mall. How do you see the business of building and operating malls evolving in Lebanon?
A: Lebanese developers mainly develop small shopping centers that are not real malls. The complete offering is what will differentiate this shopping center from the small shopping malls. ABC is a shopping mall and City Mall is also a shopping mall, but as I said, Lebanon is underserved. All studies show that we can develop more shopping malls in Lebanon and we have another project, the Waterfront City Centre in Dbayeh.
I will keep you posted as soon as I find out more about it.
The 62,000 square meters mall is set to open very soon and we already have pictures of how it will look like from the outside and few leaked pictures by Gino from inside the mall. Beirut City Centre will have the largest Carrefour store in the Middle East (13,000 sqm) and new shops that Mark has leaked few months ago, mainly FatBurger and Shake Shack, in addition to a Marks & Spencer shop, Magic Planet for Children and Vox Cinemas.
Beirut City Centre will be a nice addition to the malls we already have and is at a very strategic location in Beirut. More than $350 million dollars have been invested in the construction of this mall.
According to Sleiman Malla, who’s a senior mall manager for MAF properties, the mall is set to open in March but looking at the pictures, I don’t see that happening to be honest.
We should call it from now on security and control-free area not duty-free area.
According to reports in the Arab country, a Lebanese company selling products at the Beirut International Airport is knowingly marketing goods and products originating in Israel, including lighters.
The report presented a form allegedly showing that certain goods arrived from Milan, but another form was discovered behind it. The second form stated that the goods had arrived in Milan from the Ben-Gurion Airport. [Source]
BaytBaytak is a map-based website that links directly home buyers and renters to the property owner. The idea was launched back in September 2012 and the first version of BaytBaytak has become available today!
You can search by range of prices, number of bedrooms and apartment sizes. I am sure those of you looking for an apartment (Rent or Sale) will find it very useful and will be more than happy not to pay brokers. Too bad BaytBaytak wasn’t there when I needed it 2 years back.
Posting new listings is not yet available but there’s a considerable number of entries already.
Check it out [Here] and follow updates on BaytBaytak’s Facebook Page [Here].
Based on what I read on BrofessionalReview, the SmiLebanon campaign was launched by the Ministry of Tourism to promote the 50 days sales period initiated by the Tourism Minister himself and encourage Arab tourists to come visit Lebanon.
The first ad is nice (a bit too emotional though?) while the second is horrible, but I don’t see how those ads are supposed to bring us any tourists. Maybe it’s safer if we go back to showing hot Lebanese girls in pubs and on the beach, or make a winter version of the [Lebanon Blues] campaign, or even better include our gorgeous Miss Lebanon and her twin sister in one of the ads.
You want firepower? We got firepower!!! From Little Beirut Bath Comes an arsenal of weapons that will make the most seasoned infantrymen jealous. Packed in this crate, is an assortment of scented 1:1 soap replicas. This weapons package is guaranteed to impress regardless the occasion. [Link]
The shop that sells those gun-shaped soaps is in Portland, Oregon and is owned by Drew Clifford. According to Blogger Jad Aoun, who initially posted about it, Oregon has been nicknamed “Little Beirut” by former US President George Bush Sr. following violent riots there in the 1990s, which could explain the shop’s name, but as Jad continues and I agree, he’s simply making use of Beirut to market his products.
I wonder if any legal action can be taken against this guy to force him to remove the name “Beirut” from his products, because it’s shameful to portray Beirut in that way, regardless of what’s been happening lately.
I passed by ABC Dbayyeh yesterday and they’ve already put up a huge Christmas tree with a Christmas shopping area around it. I guess it’s never too early for Christmas.
