ARCHIVED - 15-year saga draws to an end as Benidorm Intempo skyscraper nears completion

Work began on the residential project, the tallest of its kind in Europe, in the seaside town in Alicante in 2006, but the financial crisis caused it to grind to a halt. 

Benidorm’s Intempo skyscraper, which will be the tallest residential building in Europe with two 198-metre-high towers, will be finished in July, the developers have announced.

The structure is the tallest building in Benidorm and the fifth tallest structure in Spain.

The ambitious project began back in 2006 to build a huge complex, with 256 luxury properties in two towers, each with 45 storeys. Unfortunately, fate got in the way of smooth progress almost from the start. 

Promoter Olga Urbana began construction in February 2006, and the project was due to be completed in mid-2010. However, the onset of the financial crisis and a series of technical problems soon threw spanners in the works.

The construction company announced temporary lay-offs and then went bankrupt in July 2009, causing work to grind to a halt until a new company took over in March 2010. 

Then, money problems began. The project was launched with a 100-million-euro bank loan, and in 2012, in the midst of the financial crisis, the debt was taken over by Sareb, the semi-public company created to manage and sell the troubled assets of rescued banks. Heavily in debt, the promoters were forced to file for bankruptcy in November 2014.

In the meantime, the architects involved in the project had abandoned ship in 2013.

Battles ensued with Sareb, Olga Urbana and creditors all thrashing it out in court while the unfinished buildings languished empty and almost, but not quite, finished until in 2017 SVP Global stepped in to save the day. The company based in Connecticut and specialising in ‘distressed assets’ is believed to have paid some 60 million euros for the skyscrapers.

SVP Global turned to developer Uniq Residential to resume work on the towers in 2019 and announced a 30-million-euro investment to modernise and refurbish the complex, updating the properties and bringing them in line with current trends and requirements.

More than 40 per cent of the 256 properties, with prices ranging from 250,000 to one million euros, are already reserved, the developers report. While some Spaniards have bought apartments, most of the interest in the luxury properties has come from Russian, Scandinavian, French or German buyers, the marketing and sales manager at Uniq explained.

So hopefully, by the end of July, the saga will finally be over.