But it looked good on paper...

Benidorm, Spain

Once a sleepy little fishing village in Spain, the city of Benidorm is now famous for it's high-rises.

But one particular high-rise (InTempo) is about to change that "famous" to "infamous."  The project began innocently enough in 2005 and inauguration was scheduled for mid-2009.  I guess no one was (or should have been) terribly surprised when this completion date "slipped" since the builder went bankrupt in that year instead.

Despite these omens, construction began and continued, albeit slowly and bogged down by strikes, additional funding issues and, as it turns out, some serious design flaws.

Rather than cut their losses (at ANY point during this faulty project), they pressed on...and on... and on.  The workers were only concerned with their wages as their health care benefits were doled out in the form of an innovative exercise program (until the building reached 23 FLOORS it didn't even occur to management to set up a freight elevator for the 41 workers who had to trek up and down stairs to do their job!)

But this is a tenacious developer who didn't understand the meaning of quit (apparently in either Spanish or English)  Twenty-three floors?  HA!  This luxury apartment will rival anything in Dubai and we'll just tack on another 27 floors!

And that, as Mattias would say, is when there was trouble.

By April 2011, the concrete finally reached the 46th floor, well ahead of the plans apparently for the 47th story.   And in July the finally-installed freight elevator collapsed sending 13 workers eventually to the hospital (to save money they had not created a vehicle entrance to the place and so ambulances were unable to access the site to get to the workers - some of them seriously injured).

But the icing on the cake?  In January 2012 - after creating this 47-story monstrosity - it was finally discovered that when they "grew" this project from 20 stories to 47, tthey neglected to allow for an additional elevator shaft!    Yep, that's right - if you purchase an apartment above floor 20, be prepared to haul your stuff up THE STAIRS!  (These are either going to be the healthiest apartment dwellers ever or they are truly going to redefine the term "minimalistic living"!)

I wonder what that got in Dubai that this rivals?

~later, tw

PS - I know you're wondering...who would buy a place like this?  Believe it or not, 35% of the apartments are already SOLD!  What, you say?  They must be offering huge discounts to get people to buy into this.  NO!  Developers have not reduced the prices at all!!!  A one-bedroom apartment will run you ~358,000 euros (that's ~$500,000 USD!) and I imagine that's on an "elevator-reachable" floor.  Prices go up incrementally every 10 floors (so basically if you get the place on the 47th floor you're out of air, out of gas and out of money!)