This building was constructed as a luxurious officers' club, right across from Pheonicia Hotel, (and across from the site of the bombing that killed Rafiq Hariri). There was an outcry by people in Lebanon, and the Lebanese Army then rented the building as a hotel. After the assassination of Hariri, there was speculation in Beirut that somebody in the building overlooking the convoy of Hariri detonated the bomb. But now there is a belief that the bomb was detonated manually (Hariri's cars were equipped with advanced anti-jamming devices (at $300,000 a piece, I am told).