Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff Josh Chuck, Jerry
Speaker 1: Dave and Spirit short Stuff.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's my cue. This is about the Jetta
Speaker 2: Tower j E. D. D Ah thanks to Architectural Digest
Speaker 2: and CNN and how stuff works for this stuff.
Speaker 3: But this is the story.
Speaker 2: Of if it's finished eventually will be at least for
Speaker 2: a while, the tallest building in the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's gonna make the Bird Khalifa look like poop.
Speaker 3: So let's go back to two thousand and eight.
Speaker 2: There's a billionaire investor named Prince Alowed Ben Tallal of
Speaker 2: Saudi Arabia, and I think his goal.
Speaker 3: Was to make the Bird Khalifa look like poop. He
Speaker 3: was like, I want to make one taller.
Speaker 2: I want to build a city and around it called
Speaker 2: the Jetta Economic City. Terrible name, and basically like they
Speaker 2: wanted to compete with Dubai, but in Saudi Arabia, right.
Speaker 1: Because Dubai is in the UAE. And he wanted to
Speaker 1: build the first skyscraper to reach over thirty two hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty feet or higher. And for those of us
Speaker 1: in the United States and for our friends in Liberia,
Speaker 1: that is a kilometer. So this would be the first
Speaker 1: kilometer high building, which is mind bogglingly tall, and he's
Speaker 1: doing it baby in two thousand. Well, I guess they
Speaker 1: made it up to twenty eighteen.
Speaker 3: Before oh no, year. I was thinking feet.
Speaker 1: Right, No, no, the year. Yeah, that was a little confusing.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry about that. That's right, especially when you know
Speaker 1: the construction history of the tower. But no, they made
Speaker 1: it up to twenty eighteen the year. See, I guess
Speaker 1: I should have said before they had to halt construction
Speaker 1: thanks to a bunch of different stuff.
Speaker 2: That's right, you know, it's the way he said it
Speaker 2: when you said they went all the way up to
Speaker 2: twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1: Brick by brick, all the way to twenty eighteen, big year.
Speaker 2: So yeah, construction pause in twenty eighteen. We'll talk about
Speaker 2: why here in a minute. And also, COVID had a
Speaker 2: big dent in it. The bird Khalifa is the current
Speaker 2: tallest building, at twenty seven seventeen feet.
Speaker 3: Tall the year oh no.
Speaker 2: If you're wondering about the eventual kilometer high building, the
Speaker 2: Jetta Tower, if you remember our beloved twin towers here
Speaker 2: in the United States, it'll be about twice the size
Speaker 2: of those which is astonishing to think about.
Speaker 1: Also, I mean, for a little closer to home, if
Speaker 1: you don't live in New York, the average two story
Speaker 1: houses about twenty to twenty five feet.
Speaker 3: Right for comparison, how many big macs.
Speaker 1: I looked and I was like, I'm not doing this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's over.
Speaker 2: It was designed both Birge Khalifa and the Jetta Tower
Speaker 2: by an American architect named Adrian Smith.
Speaker 3: Did not know that, Yeah, and they're both.
Speaker 2: You know, it's not a copycat of the Bird Khalifa,
Speaker 2: but it's definitely some in structure because what Adrian Smith
Speaker 2: reckoned and figured out was that making a building that
Speaker 2: tall as a triangle, as a y shape instead of
Speaker 2: a square, instead of a box or a rectangle is
Speaker 2: a lot safer for like, you know, he did wind
Speaker 2: tunnel testing and stuff like that. It's like, this thing
Speaker 2: is gonna meet the wind in a safer way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it gets awfully windy the higher up you go.
Speaker 1: And if you want to, if you're like wind cheer
Speaker 1: in buildings, that sounds interesting. I could not recommend more.
Speaker 1: A nineteen ninety five New Yorker article called the fifty
Speaker 1: nine Story Crisis about when the city Bank. I've talked
Speaker 1: about it before. I don't know when, but when the
Speaker 1: City Bank building in the seventies was built and occupied
Speaker 1: and the engineer architect figured out like, oh god, like
Speaker 1: basically I forgot.
Speaker 3: To carry the one get everyone out of there.
Speaker 1: They had to figure out how to shore it up
Speaker 1: for a hurricane hit. Oh that was like on its way. Basically.
Speaker 1: It's a really really great article.
Speaker 2: I guess at the time they would have brought in
Speaker 2: Bruce Willis to solve that problem.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, man, I got to read that. That sounds great.
Speaker 1: It is so greatly suspenseful. It's just a wonderful article,
Speaker 1: one of the best ever.
Speaker 3: Awesome. So the Birds Khalifa.
Speaker 2: One of the differences is that one tapers in different
Speaker 2: stages at different sections.
Speaker 3: But the Jetta tower is sort of one big triangle.
Speaker 2: It's going to be one continuously tapering tower and literally
Speaker 2: sort of piercing the clouds at one point.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I saw that Adrian Smith was inspired by how
Speaker 1: palm leaves stick up from the top of a tree
Speaker 1: before they unfurl cool and bend over. And I looked
Speaker 1: at a picture. I'm like, yep, that looks like the
Speaker 1: Jetta tower.
Speaker 3: Yeah, awesome.
Speaker 1: So you want to take a little break and come
Speaker 1: back and talk about I don't know, the Jetta Tower
Speaker 1: some more.
Speaker 4: Yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 2: So we're gonna just give you a few nuts and
Speaker 2: bolts appropriately about the Jetta Tower. The big showstopper there
Speaker 2: will be the observation tower, open air observation tower, which
Speaker 2: is terrifying. It'll be a two eighty seven feet They
Speaker 2: were gonna have a helipad on it, or it was
Speaker 2: supposedly supposed to be a helipad, I think, and architects
Speaker 2: were like, he can't out here with you can't land
Speaker 2: a helicopter. It's on something that high out here. That's
Speaker 2: not a good idea.
Speaker 1: So like, we'll make it an observation deck. We'll just
Speaker 1: tell everybody to ignore the giant h in the circle
Speaker 1: on the deck.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, stand in the center of that.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean, I don't like heights, but I
Speaker 1: would check that out if I ever found myself in Jeta.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Maybe.
Speaker 1: By the way, Jeda is actually already a town there
Speaker 1: on the Red Sea. There was a guy who was
Speaker 1: interviewed in this house stuff works article maybe Architectural Digest,
Speaker 1: where he said like, this is not a place where
Speaker 1: you would normally live, which I think is kind of
Speaker 1: mean to people who live in Jedda, But I get
Speaker 1: his point. It's not like Jeda economic city. But it's
Speaker 1: claimed to fame, as far as I know, is that
Speaker 1: it is the tomb. It holds the tomb of Eve,
Speaker 1: Eve of Garden of Eden fame. And they think that yes,
Speaker 1: and they think that Jeta is the is a derivation
Speaker 1: of Jada, which means grandmother. Okay, that's some Raiders of
Speaker 1: the Lost Ark stuff right there.
Speaker 3: Wow, all right, my mind is kind of blown.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it blew mine too, and I just could not
Speaker 1: share it.
Speaker 3: All right, this might blow your mind too.
Speaker 2: The Jeda Tower, at least according to its original plans,
Speaker 2: who knows what's going to end up happening. We'll have
Speaker 2: about eighty t eighty thousand tons of steel, fifty nine
Speaker 2: ultra high speed elevators, eight escalators, seven double decker elevators.
Speaker 2: I think if you're going up to that observatory in terrace,
Speaker 2: you're going to go at about thirty two feet per second,
Speaker 2: which is pretty fast. And it's the mixed use space.
Speaker 2: It's gonna the bottom third is going to be office space.
Speaker 2: It's gonna be a luxury hotel, and then the one
Speaker 2: hundred and sixty seven highest floors, which sounds crazy to say,
Speaker 2: will be apartments. And of course I'm sure some very
Speaker 2: rich sheeic or somebody will own that penthouse at the
Speaker 2: crown of the whole thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I found some pictures, some renderings of it, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, meh, I mean, you could find the exact
Speaker 1: same thing in Miami or Rio or it just looks
Speaker 1: like whatever. It's Yeah, you know, I mean, the tower
Speaker 1: itself is going to be amazing, but yeah, the it's just,
Speaker 1: you know, when you have that much space and that
Speaker 1: much wealth, there's only so much you can do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, agreed.
Speaker 2: The original name was a Kingdom Tower, and they broke
Speaker 2: ground in April of twenty thirteen. It took more than
Speaker 2: a year just to lay the foundation, and they have
Speaker 2: these concrete pilings ten feet in diameter, longer than a
Speaker 2: football field, that go down very very very deep into
Speaker 2: the earth. And because of these delays, you know, they
Speaker 2: had to stop in twenty seventeen when there was a
Speaker 2: political crisis in Saudi Arabia that was a move to
Speaker 2: sort of consolidate power and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman
Speaker 2: had a big anti corruption purge where he arrested eleven
Speaker 2: Saudi princes, one of which was the financial backer of
Speaker 2: the Jetta Tower and some of the partners in the
Speaker 2: Saudi bin Laden group. So because of that and COVID,
Speaker 2: it halted for a lot of years, and I think
Speaker 2: like five years. And I was watching this YouTube video
Speaker 2: where they basically said, like, when that happens in a
Speaker 2: place like this, like you usually tear it down and
Speaker 2: start over, because you know, sand damage, salt damage, just
Speaker 2: corrosion to steal and corrosion to the concrete probably makes
Speaker 2: it very unsafe move forward. But apparently they had the
Speaker 2: foresight to install these underground sensors in those pilings and
Speaker 2: they could get readings that apparently said like we're all
Speaker 2: good down here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's amazing. That is some foresight. You were telling
Speaker 1: me about that, and you hadn't got to the part
Speaker 1: where they had the sensors, And I was like, please
Speaker 1: tell me that they are not just building on top
Speaker 1: of an unsafe structure or they're going to have to
Speaker 1: tear the whole thing down and start over. But nope,
Speaker 1: you really came through with the great positive twist at
Speaker 1: the end.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, they eventually restarted after COVID. I think in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three. Of September twenty twenty three is when they
Speaker 2: finally restarted. They said in twenty twenty three it would
Speaker 2: be another four or five years, But in twenty twenty five,
Speaker 2: just over a year ago, sixty of the one hundred
Speaker 2: and sixty seven floors have been built, and this year
Speaker 2: in January they passed just recently the eighty floor mark.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so they're almost halfway there. There was they're thinking
Speaker 1: that they might be done in the next couple of years.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't know, but I mean I did. The
Speaker 2: YouTube video also said that they are going at like
Speaker 2: breakneck pace.
Speaker 1: Now, yeah, that's you don't really want to do that
Speaker 1: when you're building the world's tallest building.
Speaker 3: But no, I agree.
Speaker 1: Also a little fact, if you're like Prince Muhammed ben Solomon,
Speaker 1: he sounds kind of familiar. Yeah. When he did that
Speaker 1: anti corruption purgo's the same time that he ordered Jamal Kashogi,
Speaker 1: the coltunist and dissident murdered.
Speaker 3: That's right, Yet he was still welcomed into our White House.
Speaker 1: Wow, so you got anything else.
Speaker 2: I have nothing else. We'll see what happens with the
Speaker 2: Jetta Tower. I mean, it looks like it'll be finished,
Speaker 2: you know. I don't know about four or five years
Speaker 2: from twenty twenty three, but we'll see.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And sorry to all the people who saw this
Speaker 1: short stuff title Jetta Tower and were like they better
Speaker 1: not bring the White House into this short stuff is out.
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