Islamabad is set to gain a new international-standard shopping mall as part of a wider plan to improve the capital’s hospitality and commercial facilities ahead of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit. The mall will be developed in a building next to One Constitution Avenue, where the authorities are also planning to convert the existing project into an international-standard hotel, bringing one of the city’s longest-running property disputes back to its original purpose.
Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi reviewed the plans during a meeting on improving Islamabad’s hospitality sector, where officials briefed him on the One Constitution Avenue project and the preparations under way across the city. The minister said a comprehensive development plan was being prepared in consultation with an international hotel chain, and he directed the authorities to make sure construction work begins on January 1. The meeting also reviewed measures to complete hotels still under construction before the summit, and to raise the standards of the hotels already operating in the capital.
The location carries a long and troubled history. The 13.5-acre plot on Constitution Avenue, in the capital’s high-security Red Zone near the Jinnah Convention Centre, was leased by the Capital Development Authority in 2005 to a private developer for roughly Rs4.8 billion, on the promise of a five-star hotel meant to open by 2009. The hotel was never built. Instead the developer constructed luxury residential towers and sold apartments, and the project became the subject of two decades of litigation, payment defaults and official inquiries. The authority cancelled the lease in 2016, the Supreme Court conditionally restored it in January 2019 and ordered the developer to pay Rs17.5 billion over eight years, and the authority cancelled it again in March 2023 after payments were missed. In April 2026 the Islamabad High Court upheld that cancellation, and on November 4 the interior minister announced that the government had taken legal possession of the complex and would turn it into a five-star hotel within months, with a joint investigation team report approved by the federal cabinet.
That history is what makes the new announcement significant. For more than twenty years the plot has stood as a symbol of a promise unkept, a prime site that produced apartments for the wealthy instead of the hotel the city needed. The plan now is to return it to its original purpose, with the government approaching a major hotel chain to operate the converted building and a new mall rising beside it. The combination would give the area the commercial and hospitality facilities it was always meant to have, on land set aside for exactly that use from the start.
The timing is driven by the summit. Hosting a gathering of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation brings heads of government, ministers, officials and journalists to the capital, and the city needs enough high-quality rooms, meeting space and services to receive them. Islamabad has long suffered from a shortage of top-end hotel rooms, a gap that becomes obvious every time a major international event is held here. The meeting reviewed that shortage directly, looking at which hotels can be finished in time, which existing hotels need their standards raised, and how the Convention Centre should be prepared. Plans to renovate the centre and build a new hall were also discussed.
Naqvi also directed officials to stay in regular contact with hotel owners, to address their concerns, and to explore partnerships between local hotels and international chains. The point of that instruction is practical. A summit is not only about buildings. It is about whether the staff, the service and the facilities meet the expectations of visitors who are used to international standards, and whether the city’s hotels can keep operating at that level after the delegates have gone home. Partnerships with established chains are one way to bring that experience in quickly, and they can leave skills and systems behind once the event is over.
The minister further called for special training courses to prepare skilled workers for the hospitality sector before the new hotels become operational. That is a recognition that buildings alone do not make a hotel. Chefs, housekeepers, front-desk staff, drivers and managers all need to be ready, and training them takes time. Starting the courses before the hotels open, rather than after, gives the workforce a chance to be in place when the first guests arrive, and it creates jobs for people in the city at the same time.
For Islamabad, the project is about more than a single summit. A five-star hotel and an international-standard mall on Constitution Avenue would change the commercial heart of the capital, giving residents and visitors a destination the city has lacked. The test will be in the delivery. The plot has seen announcements before, and the hotel promised in 2005 never appeared. This time the government holds the property, the court has settled the lease, and a start date has been fixed. If work begins on January 1 as directed, and the hotel conversion and the mall proceed together, the city will finally get the development promised to it more than two decades ago.
