Bay of Algiers makeover: shopping, recreation and world's third largest mosque

[Al-khiyal]

ALGIERS, July 1, 2007 (Reuters) - Most camera-clicking tourists in the Mediterranean this summer will go home, as usual, without one of the world's most arresting images - Algiers and its bay.

Despite increased wealth and improved security, Algiers' faded grandeur is virtually unknown overseas thanks to powerful deterrents - a history of political violence, a post-war mood of despondency and lingering official indifference to tourism.

While tourist-friendly Tunisia and Morocco each welcome 6 million foreigners a year, bigger, richer Algeria hosts just 1.4 million, mostly Algerians from France visiting families.

Algeria's alluring capital is a slice of Paris grafted onto north Africa by colonial architects who evoked metropolitan France with an exuberance that remains breathtaking even today.

"It's so beautiful, this city of snow under dazzling light," French writer Guy de Maupassant wrote in 1881. It's a common first impression of the now-crumbling mass of white buildings that tumble down hills overlooking an immense curving coast.

Algerians say the city's thwarted potential is emblematic of the country's plight - bursting with possibilities but cursed by a political and bureaucratic elite inept at exploiting them.

Instead of preparing to welcome the world's travelers, many of the city's stressed, war-weary denizens say they want to quit Algeria due to a lack of jobs and homes and political tensions.

Computer specialist Hassan sips a coffee on a pavement cafe on Didouche Mourad, a shabbily elegant street of monumental apartment houses adorned with buttresses and balustrades.

"I'm physically in Algiers, but in here" - Hassan, 33, taps his head - "I'm in Spain."

Hassan's monthly pay of 18,000 dinars ($253) is 15 times smaller than his monthly income in 2006 when he ran a kebab shop in Majorca. He returned home for family reasons but itches to rejoin the hundreds of thousands of Algerians working in Europe.

"This is one of the two or three largest, richest and most powerful countries in the Mediterranean," veteran Algerian-born French commentator Jean Daniel wrote.

"Yet it is from this country that people want to leave."

Politics doesn't help. Forty-five years after guerrillas ejected colonial France in a brutal war and installed a variant of socialism, conflict still helps ensure Algiers' isolation.

Foreign business arrivals dipped when al Qaeda bombed Algiers government offices in April, killing 33 people and stirring fears of a possible resumption of the 1990s war between Islamist rebels and the army that traumatized many Algerians.

The city's nerves have since steadied and bombs are unlikely to deter the adventurous few thousand foreigners who tour Algeria's Saharan wilderness and the smaller number who visit Algiers' Turkish-era Casbah old city every year.

But few have faith that Algiers and outlying towns can generate decent jobs quickly enough for the tens of thousands of urban youths who spend their days standing around doing nothing.

Public figures on the outflow do not exist but former prime minister Ahmed Benbitour says: "We're a net exporter of brains."

Redha Hamiani of the pro-enterprise Business Leaders Forum says many ills stem from the failure of the state to modernize a Soviet-style bureaucracy which buries projects in red tape.

Failure to exploit Algiers' many museums, parks and beaches shows a faltering grasp of globalization, residents say.

Laid Maghmoul, head of the National Tourism Office, bemoans a "blatant weakness" in past efforts at publicizing Algiers.

The prickly mood persists despite undeniable improvements.

Top of the list is security. Rebels number about 400, down from 40,000 at the height of the war. In the 1990s rebels would place severed heads beside main roads at dawn to terrorize Algiers commuters. Now, police control is usually tight.

Second is wealth. Booming oil and gas receipts have fuelled consumer spending. Shops and apartment blocks have sprung up around the city. Food, furniture, household appliances and medicines are available in a variety unthinkable five years ago.

Foreign investors have started arriving and Gulf Arab firms plan to pump billions into hotels. The Algiers metro, a project mulled since the 1970s, is due to start in September 2008.

Decades late, the mixed blessing of Western fast food has finally arrived and Algerians can now buy cars on credit.

Residents appear unimpressed: they see youth delinquency, falling school standards, inefficient banks, and the spread of hard drugs. Some 75 percent of adults under 30 have no work. Protests for more housing sometimes degenerate into riots.

"I'm heading to France," said Mohammed, 23, killing time at a cafe on Didouche Mourad, his bottle of water attracting the gaze of a beggar settling down for the evening a few paces away.

"Algerians can be happy - all we want is a decent well-paid job. But they don't want that for us," said the security guard who struggles to get by on 15,000 dinars a month.

"They" is the authorities: Algerians tend to blame many ills on an aloof and secretive political elite critics say appears intent on plunder - a sense bolstered by a spate of violent land grabs and a surge in smuggling during the 1990s war.

Mohammed points to a man driving a "Hummer" four-wheel drive vehicle. "Look at that. Can you imagine he got the money for that car in a clean way?"

Algiers' fading beauty awaits better days

[Al-khiyal]

January 4, 2008 -- Algiers should soon have a new face, with the launch of a number of architectural projects on the eastern approaches to the city. Shopping areas, apartments and a new mosque at the Bay of Algiers will completely transform the Algerian capital.

The project began long ago. During the 1980s, the government planned to redevelop the coastal strip east of the port area, replacing 19th-century buildings and warehouses with modern districts. However, when Algeria's main source of revenue was hurt mid-decade by a drop in oil prices, the Bay of Algiers development plan was put on the shelf.

"There have been projects languishing in the background for years, due to the financial crisis experienced by the country over the previous decade. Today the money is available, and it is time to re-launch these projects to give Algiers a new look worthy of a capital city," declared President Abdelaziz Bouteflika.

The "Algiers Medina" project from the Dahli Group is already under way. Designed around leisure, it will include shopping centres, a marina, a water sports park, cultural activity areas and a 20-kilometre pedestrian boulevard, where the people of Algiers can engage in sporting activities or stroll along the seafront.

The shopping centre is due to open in 2008 and a luxury apartment and office complex should be completed in 2009, said Algerian developer and Dahli Group director Abdelouahab Rahim.

In addition to the hundreds of jobs which will be created as the project moves forward, "Algiers Medina" is intended to put an end to boredom for Algiers' families who lack public recreational space on weekends and holidays. The shopping centre, for example, will be open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with play areas for children and parking for up to 6,000 cars.

"The social dimension of Algiers Medina is a response to the needs of the population in terms of leisure and relaxation. A day off work in Algiers can be quite dull at the moment. It’s a pain for so many people who can find nothing to do," Rahim said.

Emirati developer Emaar has also shown interest in the coastal strip, where it plans to invest part of 28 billion dollars set aside for tourism and hotel projects in Algeria. The group is proposing to change the face of Algiers the same way it did in Dubai, proprietor Mohamed Ben Ali Al-Abbar told Magharebia.

Additional plans include restructuring the central railway station in Algiers to accommodate 80,000 travellers per day. The Bay of Algiers will include marinas and canals along four kilometres of seafront, along with luxury hotels, offices and prestigious apartments. In all, 18 kilometres of the bay will be transformed.

The Great Mosque is the last and largest of the redevelopment plans for the Bay of Algiers. After Mecca and Medina, Algiers will be home to the third-largest mosque in the world, able to accommodate 12,000 people. Built on 20 hectares in the Mohammadia district in east Algiers, the Great Mosque will provide a venue for spiritual, cultural and scientific activities.

Plans include an esplanade, a prayer room measuring 20,000 square metres and a minaret housing a museum. The project will also be home to the "House of the Qur’an", a postgraduate educational area with 300 teaching posts, an Islamic cultural centre and a car park with space for 4,000 to 6,000 vehicles.

The new Mosque will be the second major religious building constructed in this area after the Mosque of Emir Abdel Kader was completed in the mid-1980s in Constantine.

President Bouteflika initiated the project to create a contemporary and historical monument like the two famous Mosques in Algiers – the Great Mosque founded by the Almoravids in the 11th century, and the Ketchaoua Mosque, built by the Ottomans in the 17th century. He is now reviewing construction proposals from AS Architecture Studio (France), Atsp-Atkins (France and Great Britain), Krebs Kiefef (German-Tunisian), Ipro-Plan (Germany) and Sarl Genidar (Iran).

The people of Algiers, accustomed to projects running behind schedule, remain sceptical. "The day the project sees the light of day, we'll discuss it further," commented Ammi Omar while fishing for crayfish near the Hilton hotel.

Nacéra Bouchiba, a teacher, disagreed. "No, we need projects on this scale to change the face of the capital, which is getting uglier and uglier. I think that the urbanisation of this eastern area of the capital will allow the people of Algiers to have areas for relaxation, where they can combine utility and pleasure. For people who work all week, the weekend is the only time to do some shopping or go out as a family. Quite often they go without, because there are no leisure areas or shopping centres with parking spaces available."

The eastern part of the city already boasts prestigious hotels run by international chains. There are shopping precincts, business centres and the Algiers tramway is set to open next year. But one dark cloud remains on the horizon: a highly-polluted river which opens into the sea.

The Oued El Harrach has been a headache for the government and a nuisance to those living along its banks. Despite the installation of a waste water treatment facility nearby, pollution in the Oued is still very high. According to a study carried out by a Japanese consultancy firm, companies on the banks of the Oued are prime culprits in the river's pollution.

"The levels of mercury present in the waters of the Oued El Harrach are 30 times those accepted around the world, and forthcoming tests will show the possible risks to the Bay of Algiers", said Dr. Mitsuo Yoshida.

Although the Algerian government implemented a "polluter pays" principle in 2004, the facilities responsible for the pollution continue to pour waste into the Oued and water treatment plants along the river's banks are unable to solve the problem. Cleaning up the Oued El Harrach could cost more than a half-billion dollars.

"The Americans have the Mississippi, and we have the ‘Missipipi’", Mohammadia district resident Rachid Nouri said.

Continuing, Nouri said "The State is due to spend 3 billion dollars to build a mosque for prestige. That same State is incapable of treating the water of the Oued El Harrach."

Bay of Algiers makeover: shopping, recreation and world's third largest mosque

[Al-khiyal]

In Algiers, residents chafe at mammoth redevelopment plan

Algiers, May 1, 2009 -- Ringed by low hills and rocky beaches that sweep far into the distance, people here say Algiers Bay is among the world's most beautiful coasts. But a closer look is less picture-perfect. The waterfront is littered and largely abandoned to young couples looking for privacy and troubled young men looking for a fix. It is the kind of place you don't bring your family or your wallet, and it is not in any way evocative of this city's French and Arabic nicknames: "Algiers the white" and "Algiers the joyful."

Since the end of its civil war in 2002, Algeria has strived to pull itself out of the physical disrepair and international isolation brought on by a decade of vicious fighting that killed as many as 200,000 people. Now, as a possible balm for the city's malaise, real estate developers and government officials are planning an $8 billion makeover of the waterfront – a glittering office park that would sit next to the third-largest mosque in the world.

But residents are decidedly cool to a project that would overhaul the physical look of the city without addressing the practical needs of its depressed population, which faces an official unemployment rate of 12 percent – though independent sources say it's roughly double that.

"We are Muslims and we love our religion, but how can the government agree to build a mosque like that when at the same time we need houses, universities, hospitals, and new roads?" says Hussein, a snack-shop owner in the hardscrabble working-class neighborhood of El Harrach who refused to give his last name. "They should be creating jobs, not spending all that money on one mosque."

Worries the project ignores the poor

In February, developer Groupe Dahli unveiled an ambitious plan to transform the waterfront with a megaproject dubbed "Algiers Medina."

Supporters of the project, which is separate from government plans for a $4.5 billion mosque, say it will bring the country into the modern world and give the Algerian people a capital they can be proud of after years of war.

"We want a capital that corresponds to our ambitions and is part of the modern world and an interconnected Mediterranean world," says Said Bouhadja, a member of Parliament who sits on the National Commission for Development. "We need to renovate the capital and give it and the country a new image," he says. "The Algerian people need a capital they can be proud of."

But the project has struggled to raise capital, and many ordinary people worry that the government is more excited about a modern skyline than thinking about the best interests of the poor.

For 40 years, Abdelnour Ziani has lived and worked on the same street in Hussein's El Harrach neighborhood, which is now abuzz with gossip about Algiers Medina.

The proposed project would take up a broad swath of neighboring Mohamadeyya.

"This area has not been renovated or changed since the French left," Mr. Ziani says. "The government never even builds a new road. All they do is put new asphalt on top of the old.

"Algiers Medina will be the biggest change any of us have ever seen," he says.

But the plan calls for no renovations to El Harrach, and residents say they doubt it will add anything to their lives, other than more traffic.

Sheikh Taher Belgasem, an elderly man who crunches numbers on a 20-year-old computer in a warehouse next to Ziani's shop, is grouchily pessimistic. He laughs at Dahli's troubles: "If they asked me for money I wouldn't give them a single dinar!"

But Ziani is more optimistic. He hopes the projects benefits could trickle down to him, too, but worries that wealthy people will have more of a taste for luxuries like TV dinners than the snacks he sells.

"I have to adapt to whatever happens," he says. "Maybe I will start selling frozen food."

'Capital of Modernity' struggles to attract financing

The promotional material for Algiers Medina presents an eye-catching slice of Dubai-style luxury wedged between green hills and the bay. It plans to spend 2.5 billion euro (about $3.3 billion) to build a water park and a marina with space for 600 yachts, office towers, luxury apartments, and a 24-hour shopping mall in place of the gray warehouses and abandoned lots.

Groupe Dahli's CEO, Abdelouahab Rehim, was out of the country, and the group refused numerous requests for interviews, saying he must authorize them.

He has promised that Algiers Medina will end the "gloom of Algiers" by making it "a capital of modernity," according to the Algerian French-language daily Al Watan in December 2007.

But the country's banks and investors have shown little interest in footing the bill. In February, Groupe Dahli floated the country's first public bond offer, hoping to raise 91.3 million euro ($121.3 million), but had to end the sale without meeting its sum.

Mohamed Touati, the senior business editor of L'Expression newspaper and a supporter of the project, says that a history of state socialism and high-profile business scandals have left Algerian banks cautious of private entrepreneurs, and some ordinary people downright hostile.

He points to the 2003 bankruptcy of the country's privately held Khalifa bank. Once a titan in the local business world, it collapsed in 2003 with $45 million missing from its books and CEO Abdelmoumene Rafik Khalifa living the high life in London. He was convicted in absentia and given a life sentence in March 2007, but Mr. Touati says "the Khalifa syndrome" lingers.

To conduct the country's first successful bond sale in this environment, Touati says Dahli should have worked harder to explain the project, and its financing, to the public.

"People will not invest in a project they don't understand," he says. "You need a good marketing process to understand exactly what is going on, and I think the marketing process for Algiers Medina has been very poor."

Salah Mouhoubi, professor of economics at University of Paris, says financiers need to have more vision to see the benefit of such a project.

"When the French built the Eiffel Tower, people said they were wasting money, but it in the end it gave great prestige to Paris," he says, adding that Germany, Italy, and the United States have all funded attention-grabbing projects.

"We need something that will give Algiers some prestige," he says, "and the banks should be financing it."