In May 2008,
soil testing in the area cast doubt over whether the proposed location could support a skyscraper of the proposed one-mile (1,600 metres, 5,250 ft) height, and
MEED reported that the project had been scaled back, making it "up to shorter". Work on the foundation was scheduled to begin towards the end of 2012. Statements that construction would soon begin were made starting in 2008. In August 2011, the start of construction was slated as "no later than December". This meant the tower was expected to be completed in 2017, though at that time it was also possible that it could still have been completed by the date the media continued to publish, which was the prior estimate of late 2016. Reports in 2009 suggested that the project had been put on hold due to the
2008 financial crisis and that
Bechtel (the initial engineering firm for this project) was "in the process of ending its involvement with the project". Kingdom Holding Company quickly criticized the news reports, insisting that the project had not been shelved.
Architect selected In March 2010,
Adrian Smith of
Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture (AS + GG) was selected as the preliminary architect (though the firm deny involvement in the earlier, mile-high design). Later, when the proposal was more serious, they won a design competition between eight leading architectural firms, including
Kohn Pedersen Fox, Pickard Chilton, Pelli Clarke Pelli, and
Foster + Partners, as well as the firm Smith formerly worked for,
Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, which was the final competitor in the competition before AS + GG was chosen. In addition to Burj Khalifa, Adrian Smith has designed several other recent towers; the
Zifeng Tower in
Nanjing, China, the
Trump International Hotel & Tower in Chicago, and the
Jin Mao Tower in Shanghai, as well as the
Pearl River Tower in
Guangzhou, China. The four buildings are all among the forty tallest in the world. Furthermore, the Pearl River Tower is a unique tower that was originally designed to use zero net energy by drawing all its needed power from
wind,
sunlight, and
geothermal mass, though this design goal was not fully achieved. In October 2010, the owners (Kingdom Holding Company) signed a development agreement with
Emaar Properties PJSC. The final height of the building was questionable, but it was still listed to be over 1 kilometre. Kingdom Holding said construction was progressing. Designs for the foundation were in place by early August 2011 and the contract for the
piling was tendered. On 16 August 2011, Langan International officially announced their involvement and that the foundation and piling had to be uniquely designed to overcome subsurface issues such as soft
bedrock and
porous coral rock, which normally could not support a skyscraper without settling. The foundation is similar to that of the Burj Khalifa, but larger; it is expected to average around deep with a concrete pad of area around . The concrete must have low
permeability to keep out corrosive
salt water from the Red Sea. Its depth and size are also considered to be an indicator of what the tower's final height will be. The piles will be up to deep and the pad over across, yet the building, which will weigh over , is expected to settle. The idea is that it settles evenly enough so that the building does not tip or put undue stress on the
superstructure. Computer modelling programmes performed tests at the site to confirm that the foundation design would work. A later design for the foundation, to be constructed by Bauer in 2013, calls for 270 bored piles up to deep, which have to be installed into the difficult ground conditions.
Approvals In March and April 2011, several news agencies reported that the Mile-High Tower design had been approved at that height and that the building would cost almost US$30 billion (SR112.5 billion). This design was going to be drastically larger than the current design, with a floor area of , and would have used futuristic wind-aversion and energy-producing technology for sustainability. It and the surrounding city would have had the ability to accommodate 80,000 residents and one million visitors, according to
RIA Novosti. While the official construction estimate was (at the time) expected to take five years and three months (63 months), others calculated that it will take over seven years, based on the duration of Burj Khalifa's construction.
Contractors selected In early August 2011, the
Saudi Binladin Group was chosen as the main construction contractor with the signing of an SR4.6 billion () contract, which is less than it cost to build the Burj Khalifa (US$1.5 billion). New renderings were revealed, and on 2 August it was widely reported that the project was a go at the height with a building area of , and will take 63 months to complete. The announcement of the main construction contract signing caused Kingdom Holding Company's stock to jump 3.2% in one day, in addition to KHC already having reported a 21% rise in second-quarter net profit. Gordon Gill and Adrian Smith were also confirmed as the architect. The
landscaping contract for the Jeddah Tower was awarded to Landtech Designs, a US-based company, which was tasked with irrigating of green space, to be collected through rainwater. Financing for the Jeddah Tower was complete by September 2012; Talal Al Maiman, chief executive officer and managing director of Kingdom Real Estate Development Co., said it had taken 20 months to gather all the investors. The next month, Kingdom Holding awarded contracts totalling $98 million, and Subul Development Company paid $66.5 million for some land on the site. The Kingdom Riyadh Land project, a mixed-use commercial and residential development, will generate more than $5.33 billion of total investment and will house up to 75,000 people. The final master plan contract was awarded to Omrania & Associates and Barton Willmore. Bauer, a German Foundations equipment manufacturer and contractor, was awarded a $32 million contract to support the initial phases of construction of the Jeddah Tower, including the installation of 270 bored piles measuring in diameter. The Jeddah Economic Company (JEC) appointed the joint venture of
EC Harris and
Mace to manage the project in early 2013. The Saudi Water Company also signed a 2.2 billion-riyal ($587 million), 25-year deal with JEC to supply of treated and drinking water per day.
Construction begins and delays Construction started on 1 April 2013. The pilings were completed that December, allowing above-ground construction to commence in September 2014. In late 2017, the owner of Kingdom Holding Co, which owns 33% of the tower, and the chairman of the Saudi Binladen Group, which owns 17% and is the primary contractor, were both arrested as part of the
2017 Saudi Arabian purge. Construction of the tower continued, although some senior managers at Kingdom Holding were redirected to other projects. In February 2018, Mounib Hammoud, CEO of Jeddah Economic City, said that construction was continuing and that they hoped to open the tower by 2020. The walls had risen to by October, with the core reaching 60 storeys; at the end of the year, the reported height was . Building owner JEC halted structural concrete work in January 2018, with the tower about one-third completed, due to labour issues with a contractor following the Saudi Arabian purge. As a result, work on the tower became stalled (after it reached its' 63rd floor in 2018). Two months later, Kingdom Holding Company signed a deal with
Orange Business Services to provide
information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure to Jeddah Tower, Work was stalled once again in 2020 due to the
COVID-19 pandemic, which ultimately led to a years-long delay.
Restart In September 2023, the Middle East Economic Digest (
MEED) reported that
Jeddah Economic City had restarted the project and a request for proposals had been issued for a contract to complete the construction of the tower, which came after construction faced a three-and-a-half year hiatus. Fourteen construction contractors from the region, Europe, and China were given three months to prepare their bids. In May 2024, the architect confirmed that construction would resume and it was estimated that the tower to be topped out in 2 years. Construction officially restarted in January 2025. Work progressed at a relatively slow rate due to the observation of
Ramadan in Saudi Arabia, but soon sped up after the festivities with Jeddah Tower reaching its 66th floor by April 2025. During the restarted construction, a new crane was installed on the core part of the tower in order to accelerate the construction. and on 14 April 2026, the tower reached its' 100th floor. == Development team ==