by AFP – Bulldozers worked atop the roof of the Brasserie du Levant on
Wednesday, knocking down portions of the massive concrete building as
neighbours looked on quietly. Established in the 1930s, the factory brewed the Lebanese beer Laziza for decades before closing in the mid-1990s. In its place will come “Mar Mikhael Village” — dozens of apartments
and townhouses, as well as retail spaces, named after the eastern
district that has become a hybrid of loud bars and sleepy residential
streets. Residents of the neighbourhood have already begun complaining about
the noise pollution and dusty construction site created by the project. In designs posted on the architectural firm’s website, the sleek
development continues to feature the arched sign reading “Levant
Brewery” that hung at the complex’s entrance for decades. But a video posted online by local activist Ghassan Salameh on
Tuesday showed bulldozers knocking the sign back down onto the roof,
producing a cloud of dust. “It got really real when we started seeing the sign come down and the windows being dismantled,” Salameh told AFP.

He said he was working to organise residents into a campaign “with the sole purpose of asking a few questions.” Many older local residents believed the building was simply being
renovated or would be turned into dorms for university students, he
said. “No one told them what roads will be closed, what kind of machinery
will come into the neighbourhood, what kind of noise they’ll have to
endure for years,” he said. Activists have started a Facebook page to post updates about the demolition and organise opposition to it. “The historic character of the neighbourhood… will be under threat,” it warns. “We demand the immediate halting of the demolition.”

Activists and Beirut residents have long lamented the rampant pace of
new development, at the expense of the city’s existing architecture
including elegant Lebanese villas. Despite an economic downturn caused in part by the conflict in
neighbouring Syria, a construction boom that began at the end of
Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war shows little sign of slowing. In 2010, the culture ministry said just 400 old mansions and
buildings were left in the capital, from more than 1,200 inventoried in
1995.