Unfinished Four Seasons hotel to be demolished.

17 Dec, 2006

The empty Quatro Estacoes (Four Seasons) hotel, whose 25 floors have towered over the Costa do Sol beach in east Maputo for over three decades, is to be demolished by implosion in February 2007, the Mozambican news agency AIM reports. Begun towards the end of the colonial era, construction was abandoned with the arrival of independence in 1975, and subsequent attempts to complete the building have all fallen through. Controlled Demolition Incorporated (CDI), a company based in Maryland, United States, has been hired to carry out the implosion under the direction of the Mozambican company Consultec. The 6,000 sqm plot currently occupied by the unfinished hotel may be taken over by the US embassy, which AIM says has expressed interest in moving its premises there from its present site on Avenida Kenneth Kaunda closer to the city centre.