Huge Condo Construction Halted In Jomtien

A court says this new View Talay
building is too close to the beach.The largest developer of condominiums in Pattaya over the last decade has been View Talay, who has put up five 500-plus-apartment developments already, and has another three (I think) under construction in both Jomtien and Pattaya. (An old friend of mine used to jokingly stick up his nose and call the places "farang ghettos".)


The front of the building is nearer
to the water than the arrow is here.


Obviously, builders in Pattaya have
never been particularly concerned
about the law which limits building
height within 200 meters of the water.Anyway, one of the new View Talay developments has created a firestorm by building what visually is a huge wall of a building that looms right out over the beach, more or less blocking any view up or down the beach from other buildings... all of the other buildings... which sit further back from the water's edge.

It seems that there is a law that states that you cannot build a building more than 14 meters (about 5 stories) tall within 200 meters of the water. (Obviously most of the skyscrapers in downtown Pattaya as well both of Pattaya's top resorts — the Royal Cliff and the Dusit Resort — violate this law as well... too late to do anything about them, naturally.) The View Talay company is trying to claim that the building is further than 200 meters from the water — at low tide. (If you have ever seen low tide in Jomtien, you know that the beach is 200 meters away from the water at low tide, so it's kind of a laughable claim for the building.) In the meantime, a court has ordered all construction on the building halted until this can be sorted out.

Last year I wrote about the fact that people were protesting the construction of this building because it blocked their view of the ocean, and my opinion was that if you wanted a guaranteed view of the ocean, you should not buy an apartment where you have some of Asia's most valuable undeveloped real estate lying between you and the ocean. (I assumed these people were from the buildings behind the new View Talay building... not next to it.) A law prohibiting construction like this makes sense, and although I criticize the government department that issued a permit for something this large and important without getting all the details straight, I'm glad that something is being done about it now.

It will be interesting to see how this works out, and I offer my condolences to all the people who bought condos in this building.