AMMAN (AFP) – Jordan signed a memorandum of understanding with a Lebanese company for the creation of a five-billion-dollar tourist city in the Red Sea port of Aqaba.
The MOU was signed by Horizon Development Holdings chairman Bahaa Hariri, the son of slain former Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri, and the head of Jordan’s Aqaba Special Economic Zone Authority (ASEZA) Nadir Dhaba, the official Petra news agency reported.
The city will be built on 13 million square metres (145 million square feet) of land that is 11 kilometres (6.8 miles) north of the Red Sea and is built around a man-made lagoon.
The project will take about 10 years and includes homes, offices, luxury hotels, gardens as well as cultural centres and public buildings.
Petra billed it as “one of the biggest developmental projects in the region.”
It is expected to create 50,000 jobs in the desert kingdom, which struggles with poverty.
It’s really interesting to see Jordan developing thus. Having both worked and done tourist-y things there last summer. I can only hope that Ukraine will be as welcoming as Jordan one day. Some parts of it already are, but overall, the problems that plague Crimea turn a lot of people away. I know, I know, “everybody hates a tourist,” but Crimea is too wonderful not to share. I was conceived there, after all. 🙂 And I think my parents would have had equal success conceiving me at Aqaba, or at the Dead Sea. Location, location, location.