Da Nang officials plan to move out of sizzling $90 mln skyscraper

You think it is a waste to throw away $90 million? Vietnam’s central city might be doing just that.

Officials in the central coastal city of Da Nang are complaining that working in the city's administrative center has become unbearable due to the heat and oxygen depletion. The answer? The city might just build a new building to replace the $90 million skyscraper.

The plan to build a new office building reportedly came as a complete surprise to many people attending a meeting held by Da Nang People’s Committee on Thursday morning.

Answering questions, a senior leader said that the administrative center is too hot to work in the summer.

“We have asked the management board [of the building] to address the problem by pumping extra oxygen into the air in order to make state employees feel better,” said Dang Viet Dung, vice chairman of the People’s Committee.

The administrative center opened in December 2014 and cost VND2 trillion ($90 million). To put the figure into perspective, Da Nang spent 5 percent of its gross domestic product of VND41.7 trillion ($1.9 billion) in 2014 to build the office building.

The 37-storey skyscraper of more than 65,000 square meters has become a symbolic nucleus of the city, and around 2,000 municipal officials work there.

Noticeably, the city council kicked off the construction without holding a public vote.

Da Nang’s leaders have confirmed that they will not decide on their own this time.

“We didn’t call for public vote before, but that doesn’t mean we are going to do same thing in the future,” said Dung.

No detailed plans about the construction of a new administrative center have been released.

By Nguyen Dong / VnExpresss