Race to the sky: 200m tall tower earns bragging rights

Britam Tower in Nairobi is 200 metres is tall and is now the tallest building in East and Central Africa. PHOTO | GENEVIEVE AWINI | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • Britam Tower, which has 31 storeys and an exterior 15-storey silo for parking, was launched at a ceremony held on Friday.

  • Construction works are ongoing for The Pinnacle, which will be staring down at Nairobi from a 300-metre elevation.
  • The people behind The Pinnacle estimate that construction will be complete by December 2019, after which it will hold the title of the tallest building in Africa.

By July 2016, the tallest building in Kenya was the UAP-Old Mutual Tower, standing tall at 163 metres.

Not anymore. Now the bragging rights belong to the newly-opened Britam Tower, which is 200 metres off the ground and whose owners say is now the tallest in East and Central Africa.

Britam Tower, which has 31 storeys and an exterior 15-storey silo for parking, was launched at a ceremony held on Friday.

Its reign is, however, living on borrowed time because not too far away, construction works are ongoing for The Pinnacle, which will be staring down at Nairobi from a 300-metre elevation.

NATURAL ELEVATION

The people behind The Pinnacle estimate that construction will be complete by December 2019, after which it will hold the title of the tallest building in Africa.

Interestingly, all the skyscrapers are in Nairobi’s Upper Hill, a region that got its name because of a natural elevation, but which will soon be the literal upper hill as far as sky-high structures are concerned. “Upper Hill is on the path to becoming the next ‘Sandton’ of Nairobi,” wrote Ruritie Ndegwa on medium.com in December 2017 as he shared photos of buildings to be erected in the area over the next five years.

He listed the proposed 88 Nairobi Tower, Britam Tower, Crowne Plaza, The Pinnacle, KCB Towers, the UAP-Old Mutual Tower and the proposed Kilimanjaro Towers as among the structures that will make Upper Hill resemble Sandton, an affluent area in Johannesburg, South Africa.

EARTHQUAKE

The Upper Hill buildings bring a sense of pride to the people behind them, going by the speeches made on Friday at a function to announce that the Britam Tower was ready for leasing. “The comfort you have with this building is that if there was to be an earthquake in Nairobi, this would be the last building standing,” said Mr Ambrose Dabani, the CEO of Britam Life Assurance.

He added that no other building in Nairobi gives its occupants a “stress-relieving” chance to see Mt Kenya, the Nairobi National Park, Wilson Airport, Nairobi CBD among other scenic views in one enclosure.

Dr Benson Wairegi, the group managing director of Britam Holdings, was not left behind in the use of superlatives in describing the building. “We have eight high-speed lifts to travel from ground floor to the top floor in less than 30 seconds. And these are the fastest lifts in any building in Africa,” he told journalists. “It is the tallest on the highest ground in Nairobi. This is the third tallest building in Sub-Saharan Africa,” he added.

MULTINATIONALS

But they were not all talk and no trousers. Their talk was backed by tours around the building. Its animated lighting from outside and its deceptive simplicity inside, leaves any observer in awe.

Mr Dabani said it was not an easy undertaking right from the start, because the building stands on a solid rock. But he said the excavation team found a way of cracking the tough material in time for the start of the construction. “In November 2013, the construction began,” he told the gathering.

Britam Tower will target diplomatic missions, multinationals, financial institutions among other tenants. “We are really looking for institutional tenants as opposed to individual tenants,” added Dr Wairegi.

Way before construction kicked off, Mr Dabani said, getting approval was a tall order as it was hard convincing authorities that they could put up such a tall building.

GETTING APPROVAL

The other challenge was to get the teams to work together. Dr Wairegi said it was not easy to bring together the main contractor, sub-contractors, consultants, architects, surveyors among others.

With Nairobi’s real estate experiencing a glut in office space, it will be a wait-and-see matter on whether all the space will be taken up. “The challenge for us, to be honest, is now filling it up,” he said. “Fortunately, because of the state and the standard of completion and the quality of the building, we would have no problem.”

 Way before the construction kicked off, Mr Dabani said, getting approval was a tall order. “We had the tough job of convincing authorities that we could do a 201-metre building from the ground. Eventually we succeeded, and we even got a much better approval. Now in Upper Hill you can put up a building as tall as 300 metres,” he said. “I’m sure when the next person puts up a 35-storey building, they will be riding on the hard job that Britam did to get that approval.”

NO EASY TASK

The other challenge was to get the teams to work together. “Construction is a very challenging activity,” said Dr Wairegi, adding that it was no easy task bringing together the main contractor, the sub-contractors, the consultants, architects, quantity surveyors and other individuals involved.

Even placing the tall pinnacle standing off the building was not an easy undertaking as winds kept forcing the contractor to put off operations, but Dr Wairegi was glad that it all ended, heaping praise on Laxmanbhai Construction, the contractors of the structure.

Britam Tower will target diplomatic missions, multinationals, financial institutions among other tenants, Mr Dabani said.

“We are really looking for institutional tenants as opposed to individual tenants,” added Dr Wairegi.

WAIT AND SEE

With Nairobi’s real estate experiencing a glut in office space, it will be a wait-and-see matter on whether all the 303,242 square feet that are available at the Britam Tower — backed by a parking capacity of 1,002 cars — will be taken up.

This is because in the neighbouring UAP building, just 35 per cent of the available space had been taken up more than seven months after its launch.

“The high levels of new supply of commercial office space have negatively affected rental levels and occupancy rates,” said a 2017 report by Knight Frank.

“The challenge for us, to be honest, is now filling it up,” admitted Dr Wairegi. “Fortunately, because of the state and the standard of completion and the quality of the building, we would have no problem.”

The Britam Tower was developed by Britam Properties, a subsidiary of Britam Holdings. Britam Properties is also developing 11 floors of fully-furnished apartments in Kilimani worth Sh3.3 billion.