Developer in Lebanon dares to think big

Mohamad Saleh is a man of big ideas. His spacious office in Beirut's central business district is crammed full of mock-ups, posters and brochures of the concepts that he wants to realise with his company, Noor International Holding, writes Ferry Biedermann.

Mohamad Saleh is a man of big ideas.

Mohamad Saleh, the chairman of Noor International Holding, is determined to change the face of the region. But the financial crisis has delayed some of his dreams, including an island in the shape of a cedar tree off the coast of Lebanon.
They are all eye-catching, particularly the one that this year caused a stir in Lebanon and abroad, the proposed construction of a US$8 billion (Dh29.38bn) island or peninsula in the shape of the country's national symbol, the cedar tree, off its Mediterranean coast. The project is on hold for now as Mr Saleh seeks the approval of the necessary licences, which will probably have to wait until after the new Lebanese government is formed. But it remains close to the heart of this 39-year-old Lebanese businessman and civil engineer, who grew up in Kuwait but says he always felt a strong connection to the country.
"My sister's name is Arza, that is Cedar, and my daughter's is Noor," Mr Saleh says. "My other sister is called Lebanon and my mother-in-law, Syria." Lebanon has been his home since 2007, after having spent most of his life in Kuwait, with time also spent in Saudi Arabia and Qatar. "I always felt I was Lebanese, but I was outside of Lebanon because, you know, in 1970 until the 2000s Lebanon was at war," Mr Saleh says. For him, that makes the Cedar Island project more than mere bricks and mortar.
"It was not just a real estate project, it was society and to make a sustainable project," he explains excitedly. "That means we want to make green areas, we want to generate green power and to create jobs for people, to generate income, to have activity in the market." While Mr Saleh claims the current government has given the project its blessing, "verbally, not in writing", it has faced stiff opposition from the moment it was announced last February; from a 4,000-friend Facebook page to environmentalists appalled at what they see as an assault on the coastline.
The environmentalists' opposition seems particularly irksome to Mr Saleh, who launches into a lengthy defence of the project. The disturbance to the marine environment will be minimised, he says, by making a large part of the development float or stand on pilings and steel structures. "They will be open, allow water to come and go. Other parts we can make as an aquarium, a hotel under water, a mall under water. It's normal, it can be done, it's not all reclamation."
As for the rocks needed for the reclamation part, Mr Saleh says he will leave the seabed undisturbed, instead working with rubble from tunnels that he envisages on the mainland. "We will make a tunnel in the mountain. We will open new roads for Lebanon, shortcuts for the people." Cedar Island, the underwater hotels and malls and the tunnels are all examples of Mr Saleh's propensity for big thinking. He has developed a series of concepts that he wants to carry out with Noor, each one more ambitious than the other.
The company's website features a range of them: a relatively modest idea for a hotel in the form of a boat, with berths for yachts; a "media hotel" with a giant screen on its facade; a "furniture city" with buildings in the shapes of couches; and a series of regional property investment centres in the shape of a giant globe. He takes out the brochures for each and emphasises their features with broad gestures: "This is the design, here's the zoning, there's the infrastructure."
Mr Saleh presents these concepts as the fruit of his 12 years of experience in property development and says they are ready to be implemented. His company, which he founded in 2007 to consolidate his holdings from previous projects, is a "real estate factory", he says. Among the Noor affiliates he mentions are big international names such as Philips of the Netherlands, Panasonic of Japan and LG of Korea.
It is a far cry from his first property project, which he carried out in Lebanon with his Kuwaiti partner in 1995. He tells of how he constructed Mountain Gateway, 11 buildings in the Mt Lebanon area north of Beirut, and sold the apartments to people in Kuwait and other Gulf countries. It was a steep learning curve for him as he was only one year out of university. "I learned much because it was my first time in Lebanon. I faced many problems. I faced many cheaters."
It was only the second time Mr Saleh had visited Lebanon, after a trip in 1993 when he met his wife, Renee Saleh. "I was 23 years old and I saw my cousin. I liked her and I married her." Mr Saleh says he is a "self-made man" who felt compelled to make something of himself. Something was lacking from his life, he says, because he was an only child whose father was absent, working in Saudi Arabia, and whose mother was also busy.
"I felt from when I was young that I wanted to make something of myself, because I feel I have a gap in my life. My father in SA [Saudi Arabia], my mother always working, and at home I had no father, no mother, no brother, no sister. "I challenged myself to remove all this and to reach something; not only money, something good for people." When he started in business he told his partner, Khaled Behbehani, who belonged to a rich Kuwaiti family, that he wanted to be "an investor, not an employee". But all he had to bring to the venture were his ideas.
"I was a partner with Behbehani, but I was partner with my brain, not with my capital, I told them," Mr Saleh recalls. After the project in Mt Lebanon, others followed in the UAE, Qatar and elsewhere in the region. He mentions two projects in Dubai, three in Sharjah, and four towers in Qatar. He also talks of his involvement in the Lulu tower in Sharjah and the project he is proudest of to date: the Rose Tower Rotana hotel in Dubai, "the world's tallest hotel" as it has been called.
"It's in the Guinness book - the tallest hotel, 333 metres." But no project run by Noor International Holding has so far begun construction. The first two that are likely to be launched are the Noor al Hussein project in the Iraqi Shia holy city of Karbala and a "module city" in Aden, Yemen's southern port. In both cases, Mr Saleh is still waiting for the land to be released by the local authorities. The $450 million Karbala project would bring five-star tourist facilities to the important pilgrimage destination, Mr Saleh says, "as time-shares". It should be completed in three years.
The Aden project is to be completed in six stages, the first of which is budgeted at $1bn, he says. Some in Lebanon express doubts about Mr Saleh's claims, but he is undaunted, saying that if it were not for the global financial crisis, many of his ideas would already be visible. "The crisis changed my calculation. It was not a good time to announce it six months ago," he explains. "No, I think, my year is not 2009. You will hear more from Noor in 2010. You will hear a stone foundation here, they deliver the second floor of the globe there."
Mr Saleh is confident the worst of the downturn has passed and his projects will start to pay off soon. "I invested to know, to start, to create. You only see one or two projects but if you look at future projects you know what this investment means, where I put the investment. "The revenue for me may be generated within six months, billions maybe within six months, maybe within one year, two years. I don't know. I invest so much in the roots of the tree."