Royal business I

The Bangkok Post recently had a seemingly innocuous headline: Ratchadamri condo ruling overturned. It reports on the Supreme Administrative Court overturning “a lower court’s revocation of a construction licence granted to a high-end residence project on Ratchadamri Road in Pathumwan district.” The court ruled that the Mahadlek Residence project met all of the necessary safety requirements and regulations on floor area and open space ratios, overturning the Central Administrative Court’s 2019 ruling that these were non-compliant.

It may seem odd that the lower court got these basic requirements wrong…. But then the story adds: “A 41-storey condominium project is planned for the 1.3-rai land plot owned by the Office of the Privy Purse.” In other words, the land belongs to the king.

A reader sent us some of the online information about this deal.

The story goes back quite some time. A Bangkok Post report from 2013 begins by noting that “residents of Mahadlek Luang in Bangkok’s Pathumwan district have had enough of construction and are gearing up for a struggle to get more green space for their community.” The report states that the plot where the “Mahadlek Residence Project will be built has many large trees and is highly prized in the locality.” It adds that the residents had “prepared a submission calling on the OPP to lease the land to them for development as a park.”

Those residents were said to “have for the past five years strongly opposed the construction of a 43-storey condominium on the site.” They planned to lease the land as a park with a royal moniker.

It is observed that the “OPP owns 67 rai in Soi Mahadlek Luang sois 1-3 on Ratchadamri Road in Pathumwan district. Most of the office’s land has been leased to land developers to build condominiums and hotels.”

At the time, the developer, Thai Factory Development PLC, used the royal name, stating that the Privy Purse had approved the design.

In 2016, the disgruntled residents later teamed up with Srisuwan Janya and his Anti-Global Warming group file a lawsuit with the Administrative Court against local officials and the Governor of Bangkok who had all approved the project. The lawsuit is reported to have been filed against the Privy Purse.

The Administrative Court ruled that “the applicant for construction permission is the Privy Purse Office, which is not a juristic person. Because it is only an agency under the Bureau of the Royal Household which has the status of being a government agency with the status of a department only therefore unable to apply for construction permission…”.

It also ruled on safety and space issues, stopping construction, because the building “is an exceptionally large building and has a length of less than 12 meters on either side of the land, and the road area is less than 10 meters wide in Soi Mahatlek Luang 2.”

This is the ruling that was miraculously overturned.