Tunis Greenlights 34-Floor Mixed-Use Tower on Avenue Habib Bourguiba's Eastern Fringe

The Municipal Council of Tunis voted 19-4 on Thursday to approve planning permits for the Bab Bhar Gateway complex, a 34-storey mixed-use tower set to rise on a 4,200-square-metre plot at the junction of Rue de Rome and Avenue de France, metres from the historic Porte de France. The decision ends three years of contested planning hearings and signals a decisive shift in the capital's appetite for high-density vertical development close to its commercial core.

The timing is not incidental. Tunis is absorbing pressure from two directions simultaneously. Demand for grade-A office space in the central districts of Lafayette and Montplaisir has outpaced supply for the past four years, pushing prime rents above 85 Tunisian dinars per square metre per month as of the second quarter of 2026, according to figures compiled by the property consultancy Orial Conseil. At the same time, the national housing shortage — estimated by the Ministère de l'Équipement et de l'Habitat at roughly 400,000 units nationally — is squeezing the capital hardest, with the median apartment sale price in the medina-adjacent arrondissements climbing 22 percent between January 2023 and March 2026.

What the Project Actually Contains

Bab Bhar Gateway is not a single-use office slab. The approved scheme, drawn up by the Tunis-based architecture studio Dar Saida, stacks six floors of retail and co-working space below 18 floors of commercial offices and 10 floors of serviced residential apartments — 147 units in total. The ground and mezzanine levels are required, as a planning condition, to preserve a continuous public arcade facing Avenue de France, echoing the colonnaded shopfronts that run west toward the Tunis-Ville train station. The developer, Groupe Carthage Invest, has committed to retaining two heritage-listed facades on Rue de Rome as part of the consent conditions negotiated with the Agence de Mise en Valeur du Patrimoine et de Promotion Culturelle.

Underground parking for 310 vehicles is included, a figure planners say addresses one of the chronic complaints about the neighbouring Lac district developments, where surface-level congestion has long undermined their appeal. Construction is scheduled to begin in the first quarter of 2027, with a projected handover date of late 2030. Total project cost is quoted at 480 million dinars, roughly 148 million euros at current exchange rates.

Controversy Hasn't Entirely Cleared

Four council members voted against, citing height, shadow impact on the adjacent Jardin de la Villette, and what one written objection described as the project's potential to "overwhelm the civic scale" of one of the city's most photographed streetscapes. The Association de Sauvegarde de la Médina de Tunis, which has monitored development pressures on the historic core since 1979, submitted a formal opposition note arguing the tower's roofline would be visible from within the medina's central souks. The council's planning committee acknowledged the objection but ruled the setback distances and facade treatment were sufficient mitigation under the 2021 revision to Tunis's Plan d'Aménagement Urbain.

Residential units in the serviced block are expected to be marketed from the fourth quarter of 2026, with indicative off-plan prices understood to start around 6,500 dinars per square metre — a figure that would set a new benchmark for the Bab Bhar neighbourhood, historically priced well below the newer lakefront districts of Les Berges du Lac 1 and 2. Commercial floor plates of between 900 and 1,800 square metres are already attracting interest from regional financial institutions and at least one multinational logistics operator, though Groupe Carthage Invest has not confirmed signed heads of terms.

For buyers and investors watching the CBD fringe, the next critical date is October 2026, when Groupe Carthage Invest is expected to open a sales office on-site and release the first tranche of residential units. Those tracking the planning register should note that three further development applications for sites within 500 metres of Porte de France are currently under review by the Municipalité de Tunis — suggesting Thursday's vote may have opened a door that will be hard to close again.