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© Miguel Vidal / Reuters/REUTERS
The construction of the massive building has been plagued with problems beyond the elevator shaft oversight.
Heino Kalis/Reuters
Today InTempo has 94% of its structure completed, but the 47-story skyscraper doesn’t have a single elevator shaft.
What goes up must walk down.
In what will surely go down in history as one the greatest architectural blunders, the town of Benidorm in Alicante, Spain, had almost completed its 47-story skyscraper when it realized it excluded plans for elevator shafts.
Despite its name, the InTempo skyscraper was, seemingly rushed through the blueprint process, and its attempted message of prosperity through the country’s economic tumult has become one that is more fitting to the current state of things in Spain as a whole.
As El País headlines, “InTempo, an incompetence of high stature,” the construction of the massive building has been plagued with problems beyond the oversight of being inaccessible. The construction was initially funded by the bank Caixa Galicia, but as of December 2012, financing for the project was taken over by Sareb, which is “known as the bad bank” in Spain.
The notorious title of “bad bank” was bestowed upon banks created by the European Central Bank, the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund to focus toxic estate assets. The bad banks would be entitled to bailouts from the European Union for payments of their purchased assets that are damaged. Essentially, “bad banks” are like real estate paper shredders.
With an initial investment of $4,140, construction company Olga Urbana promoted the project as “an unquestionable standard for the future” that would stretch 200 meters into the clouds. The now-extinct Caixa Galicia had lent $122.8 million in 2005, and when the bad bank took the reins of InTempo, it did so for 50% of that price and an arbitrary $14.7 million.
The bizarre nature of the practices put in place in the construction of InTempo doesn’t stop at bad banks and missing elevator shafts. The initial backer of the project, Caixa Galicia, stopped paying workers for four months around the time it realized — after about 23 floors had been completed — that a service elevator hadn’t been installed for the 41 workers who had been hauling materials up 23 flights of stairs.
Today InTempo has 94% of its structure completed and 35% of its apartments sold. The building is currently scheduled to be finished in December, but the project is beset with allegations of fraud from both customers and suppliers, who are owed $3.3 million.
As for the elevator issue, there is still a solution to be found. Because of the way the building was constructed, there is no space for a shaft anywhere. The most likely solution, given the circumstance, is a series of external elevators like those found on the Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles, which would add a significant increase to the price tag.
The building that was set to be a “standard for the future” has instead become a terrible reminder of the present age of decadence and excess.
@JulianArenzon
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