Dubai’s Toyota building has earned its landmark status.
This 15-storey block, which dates back to 1974, stands proudly in photographs of early Dubai, with Sheikh Zayed Road cutting its way through the almost empty desert.
It was one of the city’s first towers, a starting point for a frenetic pace of development that would turn this stretch of road into one of the most dramatically built-up locations in the world.
Soon it will be no more; the building’s owner, the Nasser Rashid Lootah Group, has confirmed that it will be demolished next year.
But for me and for thousands of others over the decades, the Toyota building is much more than a milestone in the history of Dubai: it has been a home.
It was my home for about three years after I moved to Dubai in late 2004. By then, the building had already been emphatically eclipsed in height, glamour and comfort by the dazzling skyscrapers of Sheikh Zayed Road, but its relative modesty was a factor in my living there.
The room, rented from a friendly Egyptian man called Hossam, who lived in the flat with his Filipina wife, was inexpensive and included all bills.
The location was another reason as the building, standing next to Interchange One on Sheikh Zayed Road, was a short taxi ride from the offices where I worked at the time.
With its tiled flooring, basic furniture and threadbare curtains, the room (like everything else in the Toyota building) was decidedly no-frills, but it was spacious and I was conscious that I was living in relative luxury compared to many Dubai residents who could afford only a bed space.
Although my landlord and his wife were the only people in the building I tended to chat to, the diversity of the Toyota building’s residents (and the fact that very few other westerners lived there) was part of the appeal. This city within a city was a microcosm of Dubai, with Indian, Pakistani, Arab and Russian residents who all called it home. In the three years that I spent in the building, I don’t think I ever saw another westerner.
My room had air conditioning, but it was courtesy of an extremely noisy wall-mounted unit that I don’t think I ever kept on overnight, preferring to use the large ceiling-mounted fan instead.
On weekdays, I typically restricted use of the air-con to the final few minutes before I left the building to go to work.
Taxis were always prowling the area, and I would have to wait only a minute or two before a cream-coloured Toyota Camry or Nissan Altima would swing by to take me the short distance to the office.
On the ground floor of the building, there was a small shop selling food, stationery and sundry items, run by an elderly man. I used to visit regularly to buy fruit and biscuits.
Inside, the lobby was as unpretentious and functional — even shabby — as the rest of the building, but thankfully, the lifts were almost always working.
Aside from all the practical benefits, one of the key pluses of my home was the setting: my room opened on to its own small balcony with a stunning view down Sheikh Zayed Road, looking towards the Dusit Thani Dubai and the other shiny high-rises.
Sheikh Zayed Road never slept, although in the early hours of the morning, the daytime hordes of traffic mercifully faded to a trickle.
Lacking a car when I lived in Dubai, during summer weekends I would sometimes spend the day in my room reading, venturing outside only in the relative cool of the evening, perhaps to take a bus to Satwa and its Indian restaurants, or to walk down to Jumeirah and the Mercato Shopping Mall.
The service roads beside Sheikh Zayed Road were also good to wander along after dark, always buzzing with people and having plenty of cafes and inexpensive restaurants within walking distance.
Even if I stayed at home, there was always something to see from my balcony. It might simply be the traffic heading for Jumeirah, or it might be one of the cream-coloured minibuses trundling along to collect Emirates cabin crew from one of the five medium-rise buildings on the opposite side of Sheikh Zayed Road. Like the Toyota building, these residential blocks appear in early photographs of the area.
At the time I moved into the Toyota building, the area of Sheikh Zayed Road immediately south of interchange one was, by Dubai standards, relatively undeveloped, but that was to change.
Emerging from the desert was what was to become the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa, and I had a grandstand view of its construction from my flat’s bathroom window.
I rather regretted not taking a photo of progress every week or fortnight, as it would have created an impressive time-lapse set of images of the building work.
From late 2007, having taken a job with The National before its April 2008 launch, I commuted to Abu Dhabi in a rental car before moving to the capital.
This almost caused my time in the Toyota building to have a nasty sting in the tail, because once extreme rainfall flooded both the car park and my rental car (a Toyota, of course).
Had the vehicle been ruined, I would have been financially liable, but fortunately the hire car company, after I explained what had happened, charged me just a few hundred dirhams for cleaning.
As I upped sticks for Abu Dhabi, it was not without regret that I moved out of the building: It had provided a fine vantage point from which to view Dubai and its endless activity and growth.
So, when the wrecking ball does its work next year, I am sure I will not be the only past or present resident of Dubai to feel a pang of sadness at the loss of this much-loved building.
