With just days to go before Cityscape and property prices soaring, Meydan, the private developer behind the world’s largest horse racing complex, and the Indian developer Sobha are gearing up their efforts to market the first phases of a Dh21 billion mega project in Dubai.
The pair which are jointly developing 1,500 luxury villas set in 1,100 acres of parkland around the world’s biggest man-made lagoon, known as District One, are hoping they can take advantage of Dubai’s current property boom to launch an off-plan sales push.
The joint venture partners announced yesterday that they had completed construction of 80 per cent of the nine show villas they will be using to showcase the scheme. Full completion is expected in November.
Further announcements are set to follow in the build-up to the property exhibition as the developers seek to attract interest in the 48-hectare project, which is expected to be completed in about seven years and will be built around a 7 kilometre lagoon to be constructed by the swimming pool technology company Crystal Lagoons.
The project will form the first phase of the planned multibillion dollar Mohammed bin Rashid City project, located between Sheikh Zayed Road, Emirates Road and Al Khail Road, which is slated to comprise a new world’s biggest shopping mall dubbed The Mall of the World and more than 100 hotels.
The MBR City project, which was announced by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice President of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, last November, represents a revival of a similar Mohammed bin Rashid Gardens project, which was first announced in 2008 but never came off the drawing board because of the global financial crisis.
The 2008 master plan had suggested the Gardens project would cover 74 sq km, and cost US$60bn.
Back in the 2008 property boom, Cityscape became known as a show of excess, with investors throwing cheques down on off-plan properties. All that changed when the Dubai property market crashed and the exhibition shrank to a fraction of its boom time size.
But now with villa prices in Dubai up 26 per cent over the past 12 months to the end of September and apartment prices up 42 per cent according to the property broker Asteco, developers are once again gearing up for strong sales.
“Mohammed bin Rashid City-District One is poised to become a monumental destination in Dubai, offering a residential development in the heart of the city that is currently unique to anything else in the region,” said Saeed Humaid Al Tayer, the Meydan chairman and chief executive.
“District One will be the jewel in Sobha’s crown,” said PNC Menon, the founder and chairman of Sobha Group.
lbarnard@thenational.ae