PC Hotel plans new 40-storey building

* Six-star hotel will have a helipad on rooftop
* Skyscraper designed by Indian architect

LAHORE The Hashoo Group will build the city’s first 40-storey deluxe six-star Pearl Continental Hotel, with a proposed helipad on the rooftop, at a cost of $50 million within two years, announced Shamsuddin Ibrahim Hashwani on Monday at a press conference.

Mr Hashwani was accompanied by PC Lahore General Manager Haseeb Gardezi and the proposed building’s Canada-based Indian architect, Ramesh Khosla, at the conference.

Giving details of the new skyscraper, Ms Khosla said the new hotel would be built adjacent to the existing Pearl Continental Hotel building on The Mall. He said the new hotel would have 600 rooms. Combined with existing facilities, the hotel Pearl Continental would have a total of 1,100 rooms.

The 40-storey building has been planned after the district government’s decision to relax rules set for the height of a hotel building, he said. The current PC building is 110-foot high while the new tower will be 500-foot tall.

Mr Khosla said a five-storey car park, enough to accommodate 1,200 cars, would be built to cater to the needs of hotel guests. He said the hotel would also have separate swimming pools for men and women with modern gymnasium facilities.

The architect said construction would start by the end of this year and would be completed in 2006. “We will use the latest building techniques and would build the structure on columns to suit the soil of Lahore,” he said.

Mr Khosla, the chief designer, receives the Aga Khan Architectural Award in 1980. His family belongs to Lahore and moved to East Punjab after Partition. He specialises in hotel designing and also designed the Pearl Continental Hotel in Bhurban, the hotel’s new building in the city, its projects in Gwadar, Muzafarabad, Dubai and Tunis. He has also designed Serena Hotels at Faisalabad and Quetta. staff report

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