Centre Ville Beirut Has Region’s Most Expensive Retail Space

The National:

Beirut’s City Centre has the highest average retail rent, at US$167 per square foot per year, [it] is followed by Ramat Aviv in Tel Aviv at $153 per sq ft and ABC Centre Achrafieh, also in Beirut, at $139. Dubai’s Mall of the Emirates is ranked ninth in the MENA region, at $110 per sq ft per year, the report said.

This is astounding. We’re talking about an area that only a few years ago was completely shut down because of political unrest, something that could very well happen again. But what strikes me most about that report is that it says that “Beirut has relatively few shopping centers”.

What I’d really like to see is Return on Investment (ROI) figures. This to me sounds like too much hype and too little business acumen.