Someone Built A $200 Million Village Of Disney-Like Castles, Realizes His Mistake When It’s Too Late
Hundreds of Disney catsle-like faux chateaux being built for wealthy Gulf investors have just got their new residents. Ghosts. The Burj Al Babas residential area project in Turkey’s northern Bolu province began in 2014, but its developer, the Sarot Group, has failed to come up with the required amount of money for finishing the medieval castles.
Image credits: Adem Altan/AFP/Getty Images
Image credits: Adem Altan/AFP/Getty Images
The Sarot Group was recently slapped with a court-ordered bankruptcy ruling over the Burj Al Babas’ $27 million debt. The suburb project was designed to include 732 chateau-style villas, swimming pools, Turkish baths, health and beauty centers, a shopping center and a mosque, according to its website. And even though customers from Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia have bought around 350 of the 587 kitsch villas built, it’s not enough.
Image credits: Adem Altan/AFP/Getty Images
Image credits: AFP
“We couldn’t get about 7.5 million dollars receivables for the villas we have sold to Gulf countries,” Hurriyet newspaper quoted Sarot Group Chairman Mehmet Emin Yerdelen. “We applied for bankruptcy protection but the court ruled for bankruptcy. We will appeal the ruling.”
Image credits: Adem Altan/AFP/Getty Images
Image credits: Adem Altan/AFP/Getty Images
Image credits: Adem Altan/AFP/Getty Images
Image credits: Adem Altan/AFP/Getty Images
The court also ordered the group to stop all construction immediately leaving a site full of abandoned houses, but Yerdelen remains hopeful. “The project is valued at $200 million,” he said. “We only need to sell 100 villas to pay off our debt. I believe we can get over this crisis in four to five months and partially inaugurate the project in 2019.”
More info: burjalbabas.com
Image credits: Adem Altan/AFP/Getty Images
People had a lot to say about this project and its fate
The houses aren't bad in themselves, but the layout of the entire thing is terrible and would cause so many unnecessary problems. No. Just no.
This reminds me of The Palm in UAE and other artificial islands close by. The developers from Dubai couldn’t sell the villas on this artificial islands as expected and had to lower the prices because the villas were not attractive to rich buyers. They were to close together and looked the same. Wealthy people prefer distance to their neighbors and some individuality.
Load More Replies...Who in their right mind would think that a person with the funds to purchase such a fancy house would spend them on this overcrowded monstrosity? No one likes to be this close to their neighbors and people with means aren't going to buy a house that has a thousand identical clones sitting right next to it, with no space between them. What about yards, gardens, parks? This is incredibly poor design made by someone who possesses more greed than common sense. It's sad they destroyed so much land for this c**p.
I don't care what you people say, this is going to be the best ghost town in history!
Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes made of ticky tacky Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes all the same...
Copy - paste - paste - paste - paste - paste - paste - paste - paste - paste - paste - paste - paste..
Because in some parts of the world, buying such a house in such a neighborhood is a sign of success. Just go to South Korea and contemplate the groups of absolutely identical and ugly buildings (I've lived in one of those). Well, to most Koreans, living in such buildings is an absolute dream.
Load More Replies...Little boxes on the hillside/Little boxes made of ticky-tacky/Little boxes on the hillside/Little boxes all the same...
Let me guess, for an additional ten million dollars (USA) a buyer can get their own moat? Catapults? *Satire*
European style castles in Turkey for Arab customers... In addition, this is the historical architecture of the city: https://i.hizliresim.com/5agRPR.jpg
this looks like a city for gnomes made with very bad photoshop skills
Where have I seen this?.... Oh, yeah! here in Tijuana! 3044702-5c...540de0.jpg
I think a lot of people would actually be very glad to live in one of these. No yard is problematic, yes, but if you don't spend a lot of time outside it would be okay. Besides, they were saying when complete there would be swimming pools etc so I assume a nice communal area. I would live there, if it weren't more expensive than other options (although it probably is). Anyway it's a real shame if this becomes a ghost town, because probably someone is going to put a big fence around it (if there isn't already one) and at the very least it could have been a good place for someone without a home of their own to keep out of the cold.
is this the Kingdom of Far Far Away? perhaps Cinderella & friends are going to invest..
they are pretty bad " copies " of the chateau " USSE " in France : 800px-Usse...f4ba09.jpg
Maybe they could make it into a horror themed amusement park and lore some zombie Fans there, but the current government would made it less attractive to get some tourists in there country
It's a good example of the uncanny, although unintentional. A place where individuality is banned. The death of creativity.
Taste. Complete lack thereof. Vulgar. Ugly. Stupid. Artificial. Phoney. Disney must share some of this blame.
Guys!! It’s that place from Spongebob made specifically for Squidward’s type!!!
When everyone has a castle, they cease to be castles and become the same one bedroom apartment that your neighbour lives in. Didn't ANY OF THE PEOPLE THAT ERECTED THIS MESS GET THAT?
WOW... After many years of sitting empty..... with vandalism, fires and no one paying the taxes......the next step will be tearing them all down. That happened with a condo development near me. The person who built it went bankrupted - lost there house and business. No one ever saw him again!
I think it's so cool. There's a lot of neighborhoods where every house looks the same, but at least these houses have character.
When you put down clusters of houses in a civilization game app to collect taxes every 30 minutes.
In case you are interested - here's the website: http://burjalbabas.com/ Use Chrome to look at it since it will offer to translate it from Turkish into your language. Now, I'm looking at the floor plans and it appears these are small triplexs, not individual homes: http://burjalbabas.com/assets/images/katplani.pdf The door is in the turret - floors 1 & 2 are very small two bedroom apartments and floor 3 is a single bedroom. The kitchens are smaller than my first student studio apartment. No wonder they don't sell! It can only be a retirement community.
They just need to paint/stucco them in subtly varying colors and they'll be all set.
My first thought was, this reminds me of The Shire in Bend, Oregon. https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2009/10/the-shire-when-dreams-become-delusions/27770/
actually, this layout is very typical in turkey. group of villas called "site" are built in crammed up land and villas are identical %99 of the time. Turkish people love this s**t. they love to show off to their neighbors. thats why they are too close to each other
but how can you show off when your house is identical to the one of your neighbours?
Load More Replies...The houses aren't bad in themselves, but the layout of the entire thing is terrible and would cause so many unnecessary problems. No. Just no.
This reminds me of The Palm in UAE and other artificial islands close by. The developers from Dubai couldn’t sell the villas on this artificial islands as expected and had to lower the prices because the villas were not attractive to rich buyers. They were to close together and looked the same. Wealthy people prefer distance to their neighbors and some individuality.
Load More Replies...Who in their right mind would think that a person with the funds to purchase such a fancy house would spend them on this overcrowded monstrosity? No one likes to be this close to their neighbors and people with means aren't going to buy a house that has a thousand identical clones sitting right next to it, with no space between them. What about yards, gardens, parks? This is incredibly poor design made by someone who possesses more greed than common sense. It's sad they destroyed so much land for this c**p.
I don't care what you people say, this is going to be the best ghost town in history!
Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes made of ticky tacky Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes all the same...
Copy - paste - paste - paste - paste - paste - paste - paste - paste - paste - paste - paste - paste..
Because in some parts of the world, buying such a house in such a neighborhood is a sign of success. Just go to South Korea and contemplate the groups of absolutely identical and ugly buildings (I've lived in one of those). Well, to most Koreans, living in such buildings is an absolute dream.
Load More Replies...Little boxes on the hillside/Little boxes made of ticky-tacky/Little boxes on the hillside/Little boxes all the same...
Let me guess, for an additional ten million dollars (USA) a buyer can get their own moat? Catapults? *Satire*
European style castles in Turkey for Arab customers... In addition, this is the historical architecture of the city: https://i.hizliresim.com/5agRPR.jpg
this looks like a city for gnomes made with very bad photoshop skills
Where have I seen this?.... Oh, yeah! here in Tijuana! 3044702-5c...540de0.jpg
I think a lot of people would actually be very glad to live in one of these. No yard is problematic, yes, but if you don't spend a lot of time outside it would be okay. Besides, they were saying when complete there would be swimming pools etc so I assume a nice communal area. I would live there, if it weren't more expensive than other options (although it probably is). Anyway it's a real shame if this becomes a ghost town, because probably someone is going to put a big fence around it (if there isn't already one) and at the very least it could have been a good place for someone without a home of their own to keep out of the cold.
is this the Kingdom of Far Far Away? perhaps Cinderella & friends are going to invest..
they are pretty bad " copies " of the chateau " USSE " in France : 800px-Usse...f4ba09.jpg
Maybe they could make it into a horror themed amusement park and lore some zombie Fans there, but the current government would made it less attractive to get some tourists in there country
It's a good example of the uncanny, although unintentional. A place where individuality is banned. The death of creativity.
Taste. Complete lack thereof. Vulgar. Ugly. Stupid. Artificial. Phoney. Disney must share some of this blame.
Guys!! It’s that place from Spongebob made specifically for Squidward’s type!!!
When everyone has a castle, they cease to be castles and become the same one bedroom apartment that your neighbour lives in. Didn't ANY OF THE PEOPLE THAT ERECTED THIS MESS GET THAT?
WOW... After many years of sitting empty..... with vandalism, fires and no one paying the taxes......the next step will be tearing them all down. That happened with a condo development near me. The person who built it went bankrupted - lost there house and business. No one ever saw him again!
I think it's so cool. There's a lot of neighborhoods where every house looks the same, but at least these houses have character.
When you put down clusters of houses in a civilization game app to collect taxes every 30 minutes.
In case you are interested - here's the website: http://burjalbabas.com/ Use Chrome to look at it since it will offer to translate it from Turkish into your language. Now, I'm looking at the floor plans and it appears these are small triplexs, not individual homes: http://burjalbabas.com/assets/images/katplani.pdf The door is in the turret - floors 1 & 2 are very small two bedroom apartments and floor 3 is a single bedroom. The kitchens are smaller than my first student studio apartment. No wonder they don't sell! It can only be a retirement community.
They just need to paint/stucco them in subtly varying colors and they'll be all set.
My first thought was, this reminds me of The Shire in Bend, Oregon. https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2009/10/the-shire-when-dreams-become-delusions/27770/
actually, this layout is very typical in turkey. group of villas called "site" are built in crammed up land and villas are identical %99 of the time. Turkish people love this s**t. they love to show off to their neighbors. thats why they are too close to each other
but how can you show off when your house is identical to the one of your neighbours?
Load More Replies...
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