I’m still on vacation and will get back to blogging next week but I was flipping through some old photos when I found the photos below of The Family Bookshop before they closed down.
It really pisses me off how they demolished the whole block of buildings three years ago taking away a lot of great stores as well as the street’s life from the area. Until this day there’s nothing to show for it except a large big hole in the ground.
They even closed off the sidewalk and parking spots adjacent to the construction site.
The mall that was supposed to be built in that place pictured above (here’s a video as well) was supposed to be completed this year but as you can see below, construction hasn’t even started.
20 replies on “The Family Bookshop & Old Salmiya”
looks like a fantasy mall… 🙂
Looks like some kind of freaking building from Wii games.
And the area emits that awful smell, so awful that you just stop breathing while passing through!
its funny how the make all the ugly surrounding building disappear in the “image”.
here is what going to happens
heaps of traffic and no sufficient parking, traffic jam will end up in 5th ring road road 40 crossing
You took those words of my mouth i agree with you,another crap malls to be built,way to go!
wow dude I actually miss those days BIG time.
me and my cousin used to live nearby, actually our grandma’s house was right behind that building, kinda dark and trashy lil road.
Family bookshop was our fav store for comics, magz.
you should also give some credit to Fai or however it was spelt, was across hardees
Family bookshop was the shi* back then!
I got so many Archie comics and school books from there!
Sad to see these stores close down
So did they close shop completely or did they relocate somewhere else?
I used to pass by whenever I was in Salmiya.
Regarding demolishing,i read on news today that they will be removing all the boats opposite violet dickson house since they are claiming that the fishermen are causing pollution to the sea,another lovely view will be lost boats are to be removed and a silly roundabout opposite seif palace has been installed how sad.
Someone got clearance to build this crazy-looking mall?! Doesn’t anyone care what the country looks like?!
It looks like a fake project to me…
Speaking of demolishing. An Indian that works for our company became paralyzed from the waste down just this past month because the building next door was being demolished. the side wall of the building fell into their building knocking down the wall to his room. that is some pretty crappy shit since they didn’t offer any compensation. of course our company didn’t go over and beyond to to force extra compensation from the owner of the building, KRH, or sponsor of the group of men who were demolishing the building. He’s going to only get what he was making monthly( maybe KD120) for the rest of his life, that is only because the US government has to pay that.
To be fair , they faced the same problem we faced, water in the ground.
we spent 3 months pumping out water from the ground to build a basement in a small plot.
they’re sitting on a resivour. they need to remove A LOT of water to build that big parking basement.
AHMAD ARE U WARKING in THE MALL CONSTRUCTION site ??
nope , but i saw water pumps a month ago on the site.
They could always consider building the mall away from residential buildings. There’s tons of area, rather tons of space to choose from; if they continuously make such decisions in planning, they are bound to come across the “stink” sooner or later.
Kuwait does have a layer right under its soil (no point of living in denial), I’ve been told its not as much around the inner parts of land.
The owner owns a LOT of salmiya, he’s been trying to buy the whole old market for years now.
He could easily build it elsewhere, but he probably wants to control the whole area.
Do you think they will build this Mall?
well even if they want, it will not be soon,
the budget of this construction is beyond imagination.
they released the plans for pricing and it was based on Design and build business model, this means the contractor has to design it based on conceptual plans submitted by the consultant office, the majority of the complicated parts was not able to be constructed the way you see on the concept perspective that you have shown here, For example, the tunnel that you see shall be a Ski lane, however it requires a specialist to design it, and this is still not taken of yet.
So wait and you will see something different.
Loved that place. Bought lots of musical books from there back in the day.
And about that ugly mall, it seems there are some problems as the one opposite to it (Salam Mall or whatever) is near completion and they almost started during the same time.
* chuckle *
That mall rendering looks like a giant illuminated grasshoper in its heat