DEAD SEA: Peace opens up a potential paradise

02 April 1999
SPECIAL REPORT CONSTRUCTION

The March opening of the new 230-room, $18 million Moevenpick hotel on Jordan's Dead Sea coast was a milestone in the development of what could soon be one of Jordan's major tourism areas. The hotel is the first of four that are being developed and should put the area on the tourist map.

'Development of the area is the responsibility of the Jordan Valley Authority [JVA], which was originally established with a focus on agriculture,' says Yassar Toukan, director of the JVA's Investment Department, 'For a long time, with borders with Israel, the Dead Sea was a military area and certain activities were not doable.'

Toukan says it was after the peace process that the JVA began looking at new possibilities for the area, including industry and tourism. In 1996 the JVA set up the Directorate of Investment to implement a masterplan with its origins in a conceptual design by France's OTH completed in 1979 but then shelved. Planning resumed in 1994 when OTH and the local Sigma Consulting Engineers updated the earlier plan and prepared a new 25-year master plan and designs for the infrastructure to support it.

Just 30 minutes by road from Amman, the Dead Sea is an area of special natural beauty with 40 mineral springs and 15 known archaeological sites, including a port and palace built by the Roman emperor Herotus, who used the Dead Sea waters for treatment of a skin complaint. 'We wanted to make sure we could develop the area without spoiling it, so the first step was to do an environmental impact report for the coast and an archaeological survey to see which were the most suitable areas,' says Toukan. The JVA then identified 15 zones which have been allocated for special purposes, leaving large sectors of the coast untouched.

Zones 1-8 are in the Suweimeh area where the existing settlement will become a support city for all the coastal development with affordable housing, light industry and government activities. Within the area, zones 4-6 are now developing as the first resort area and will include hotels and health centres, commercial centres, up-market housing, a boat station, youth camp and a public beach. The area is expected to provide 12,500 beds, two-thirds of them in hotels.

There are now 390-rooms available at the new Moevenpick and the existing Dead Sea Spa Hotel. Other projects underway include a 212-room, JD 16 million ($22.5 million) Marriott hotel, for which a contract was awarded in October 1998 (MEED 9:10:98), a 220-room hotel for the local Jordanian Company for Curative Hotels and a 240-room Novotel being developed by France's ACCOR with the local Ziyad Salah Contracting Establishment, which is at the detailed design stage.

Toukan says curative tourism based on the Dead Sea's mineral-rich water is expected to remain the main attraction - all the new hotels have treatment centres, spas, freshwater pools and entertainment. Their design will blend with their setting and the sites will be landscaped with drought resistant plants, irrigated with recycled wastewater.

As the hotel developments proceed, the JVA is putting in the infrastructure. The National Electric Power Company (NEPCO) has a $13.5 million contract to build an 80-MW, 132-kV power station three kilometres south of the hotel zone, with equipment supplied by the Netherlands' Hollec Projects under a $2.5 million grant from the Dutch government. The station will receive 33 KV via a high-voltage line from Queen Alia International Airport (QAIA), south of Amman. Power will be transferred through underground cables to two new substations which will to transform it from 33 KV to 11 KV. The hotels now under development need 10 MW. A fibre optic cable will provide 5,000 telephone lines.

The local Hussain Atieh Corporation for Contracting has a JD 3 million ($4.2 million) contract for the drilling of wells and construction of a conveyor to bring 2 million cubic metres a year of water from the Kafrein area. The government is providing JD 1.5 million ($2.1 million) for the conveyor, while the US Agency for International Development (USAID) is financing the well and water treatment plant. Design has also been completed for a wastewater plant to serve the area, but it needs six-seven hotels to make it viable. A conveyor line has been installed but the existing hotels have their own plants to treat and re-use water.

All water pipes and power and telecommunications cables are being concealed under a service road adjacent to the main highway linking the Dead Sea with Aqaba to the south to avoid disruption for repairs and maintenance. The first three kilometres of the road are now complete and a further four-kilometre stretch has been tendered. An eight-metre wide corniche road will then be built between the service road and the hotels and recreation facilities.

Cultural attractions

Plans are also under way to provide a road link between the Dead Sea and the long established Main Spa hotel complex. The Japanese International Co-operation Agency (JICA) is due to complete a study in April for a 13- kilometre scenic route and a possible Dead Sea museum on a cliff overlooking the Zara minerals springs, south of Suweimeh. Japan is expected to finance 75 per cent of the cost of the project and the JVA the balance. 'The Dead Sea Panoramic Complex would include a museum for the geology, history and natural history of the area and would provide a new tourist attraction for the region,' says Toukan.

The complex would be the first development in the Zara area which is 80 per cent privately owned, unlike Suweimeh where all the land belongs to the government. The Zara area, with obvious attractions such as the 40 major mineral springs in a three- square kilometre area, has been zoned mainly for villas.

It will have small three-star hotels, but development will depend on the willingness of private owners to invest in projects or sell the land.

Toukan says the JVA is considering bringing in a private developer to take care of all the archaeological sites, possibly through the establishment of a series of parks. He says the JVA now has 5-6 serious investors interested in establishing hotels, health clubs and recreation projects along the coast.

The land for the current hotel developments was leased in 1996 following an auction when the JVA selected the best four of 20 offers and lessees now pay JD 2,500 ($3,500) per dunum a year in rent. Toukan would now prefer to have land sold or leased on a case-by-case basis according to the suitability of the project and is keen to see the procedures for leasing or selling land simplified to encourage faster development of the area.

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