Dubai Municipality has awarded a contract to build a new conference centre and arena at a cost of Dh1.8 billion.
Hussain Lootah, the director general of Dubai Municipality, said that the conference centre was one of the most important tourism projects set to be carried out in the emirate in the run-up up towards hosting the World Expo 2020.
The convention centre will sit on a 592,000 square foot site in Al Jaddaf, facing Dubai Festival City.
The municipality did not state to whom it has awarded the contract to build the complex, nor did it give a date for when the project will be completed.
It will contain the 10,000-capacity Sheikh Rashid Hall conference venue, which will be a 190,000 sq ft indoor arena with a height of 98ft. It will contain theatre-style seating and will be built by the creek for international conferences, seminars, music concerts and shows.
The hall can be divided into three levels and will have cinema screens and high-tech videoconferencing facilities. Five sub-halls – each of which are 10,500 sq ft, can hold up to 1,000 people. The site will also contain three towers (two hotels and one office) that will link directly to the conference centre via a covered, air-conditioned concourse building containing shops and restaurants.
The three adjoining towers will house a 33-storey, three-star hotel, a 48-floor four-star hotel and a 36-floor office block. The complex will also house 700,000 sq ft of basement parking, capable of accommodating 1,800 cars.
Mr Lootah said that the facility would give Dubai the opportunity to host major world events, adding that the Creekside location lent itself to both business and tourism events. Oliver Plunkett, the managing director of the engineering consultancy Buro Happold, said that Dubai is in the process of building several important facilities that are helping to position it as a global hub.
“Dubai has lots of components of a world-class city, but it doesn’t yet have anything like that,” he said.
He said that Dubai had established itself as a regional base for exhibitions and trade shows, but added that in other parts of the world, convention centres often operate in cities that leverage potential attendees for conferences and shows from neighbouring towns and cities.
mfahy@thenational.ae
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