The property developer behind the world’s largest race course said is pressing ahead with Dh60 billion of property developments in Dubai as the city’s market once again booms.
Speaking on the first day of a packed Cityscape, Meydan announced it was planning to help to develop 40 million square feet of hotel apartments, houses, shops and offices along the banks of Dubai’s proposed new canal.
Mohammad Al Khayat, Meydan’s head of commercial and free zone, told reporters the new neighbourhood, arranged in a series of low-rise villa schemes and towers, would, when completed, be worth Dh30bn to Dh35bn.
The new project will comprise 700,000 sq ft of offices, 400,000 sq ft of shops and 4,500 flats and serviced apartments, 44 town houses and villas totalling 9 million sq ft of housing.
Meydan plans to build the project in a joint venture with fellow Dubai developer Meraas. Meydan also said that it was starting to sell the 444 serviced apartments in its Entisar Tower on Sheikh Zayed Road, which it relaunched at last year’s show after shelving it during the global financial downturn.
The freehold tower will have an end value of about Dh5bn and will include indoor tennis courts and a suspended indoor running track. Prices will range between Dh2,500 and Dh3,500 per sq ft. Meydan said it intended to float a tender for construction work on the tower by the end of this year or the start of 2014.
“This will be a vertical community which fit with different family requirements,” Mr Al Khayat said.
In May the company also started work building 1,500 luxury villas set in 1,100 acres of parkland around the world’s biggest man-made lagoon with the Indian developer Sobha.
PNC Menon, the founder and chairman of Sobha, told The National that the company had already sold about 100 of the 330 or so villas in the first phase of the project at prices ranging from Dh10 million to Dh30m.
The group is funding the District One project, which is thought to have a total end value of about Dh21bn, through internal funding and through bank loans, although the developers declined to disclose any development values.
lbarnard@thenational.ae
