Hyatt in leaning tower set to open

No going back...its in the press, the tower is supposed to open next Wednesday. It must be true, inshallah

From the National today:

Hyatt in leaning tower set to open
Fitting out angled rooms resulted in delay of two years
The long- awaited Hyatt Capital Gate hotel is set to open this month after suffering delays as the development team struggled to fit out the rooms because of the building's leaning structure.

The five-star hotel, housed in the Capital Gate building, which is tilted at an angle of 18 degrees, is set to open on December 21. It has 189 rooms.

"The hotel was supposed to open a bit earlier and due to different reasons and the uniqueness of the building, we had to postpone," said Ashwini Kumar, the general manager of the Hyatt Capital Gate, who has been in Abu Dhabi for two years. "We missed the Formula One - that was at one time our target, but we thought, no, let's not open it when it's not 100 per cent ready," Mr Kumar said. "The challenge was that the building structure is very unique. This is a building that leans 18 degrees and this architectural feat was never ever attempted before. Every room is different as the building goes up and the curve starts, it's not easy like a normal hotel. For every room you have to order stuff differently, so this definitely took more time than we thought."

The hotel occupies levels 18 to 33 of the building. The property, announced four years ago, was originally scheduled to open in 2009, but construction also took longer than expected, as engineers faced challenges too because of the building's design. "Each glass panel is differently measured and cut," said Mr Kumar. "Another part is to get access to the building - to get the labour in and out wasn't easy because all the lifts don't go all the way to the top. These kinds of challenges were time- consuming."