UAE Vice President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum is often quoted for saying that he has so far only realised 10% of his vision for Dubai.
With Dubailand he must have leapfrogged towards the fulfillment of his dreams!
I recently visited the site and sales centre and was stunned by the magnitude of the project. When realised, this will no doubt be a serious contender in the race for this century's man-made wonders of the world!
Dubailand is built on a 3 billion square feet area about 20 min drive from Dubai. Literally it will become a new Dubai.
Conveniently located close to the new Dubai International Airport, which rumors say will be equal to Chicago O'Hare and London Heathrow in size, the mega-project is the worlds biggest and most ambitious leisure and tourism destination.
City of Arabia is a 2 billion dollar project literally creating a new major suburb of Dubai. It will, when completed, provide homes for over 35,000 residents, and include Mall of Arabia, eventuelly the largest mall in the world spread over 10 million square feet.
Other key features in City of Arabia is Restless Planet, a dinosaur-themed park being developed in collaboration with the Natural History Museum of London, and Wadi Walk Shopping & Entertainment Centre, low-rise Mediterranean style apartment-houses with a canal flowing between an boutique shopping and various entertainment.
Investors from abroad would like to know that this completely new city is expected to be purely freehold!
Dubai Sports City is expected to become the region's premier sporting venue featuring 4 giant-sized stadiums, an Erni Els Championship Golf Course and a Manchester United Soccer School, and several other delicacies.
Everybody who have visited Dubai in recent years have either visited or heard of Emirates Malls with the first skiing slope ever built in the desert! As if this wasn't enough, the ambitious developers of Dubailand have planned Dubai Snowdome which with its more than 200m diameter and 70m height will be the largest free-standing see-through dome structure in the world.
Easy to see the symbolism in that the sales centre of Dubailand has got two real tigers walking around in the courtyard - as if to send a strong message to the world that this century's tiger economy is not to be found in Asia!
Visitors of Dubailand will undoubtly be split between those who consider it the result of a megalomanic developer going berzerk or the most magnificent city-project in recent times - this wet dream of every true SimCity fan.
This tremendous growth, making the GCC area the fastest growing retail real estate market in the world according to a report recently published by top three global property service consultants Colliers International, is fuelled by UAE and Saudi Arabia with 44% and 30% respectively of the GLA by the end of the decade.
