Work is set to restart on plans to build thousands of villas around the world's largest horse racing complex in Dubai.
Property developer G&Co said yesterday that it has finally broken ground on a scheme to build 198 villas on land to the south of Dubai's Meydan racecourse after initially announcing the scheme three years ago.
The Millennium Estates gated community was planned to have been finished in 2011 but is now scheduled to be complete by late 2015.
It will be built on 3.8 million square feet of land at the Meydan free zone, most of which Meydan sold to G&Co in 2008 at prices set to average about Dh1,063 (US$289) per square foot.
The original scheme was intended to comprise 187 villas but the companies said that G&Co had bought a second package of land from the master developer in 2010 to build a bigger project. In total Meydan said the land price for the project was Dh370 million.
The news comes as Meydan also prepares to launch the 1,700 villa Hadaeq Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid scheme, part of the Emaar and Dubai Properties Group masterplanned Mohammed Bin Rashid City. It is slated to have the world's biggest shopping mall and more than 100 hotels and has been planned to be 30 per cent larger than London's Hyde Park.
The project, which was announced at the Cityscape Global exhibition in October, is will include English, French and Japanese style gardens connected by canals and lagoons alongside horse riding trails, jogging paths, bicycle tracks and other sports facilities.
Mohammad Al Khayat, head of commercial and free zone at Meydan, said in response to a question about whether he had concerns about bringing so many similar villas to the market at the same time: "To be honest the villas G&Co are developing are targeting a different end user from the ones we are about to announce. You will see that the layouts are different, the designs are different."
"I don't think these schemes will be competing for the same sorts of buyers," he added. "What they will do is give the end user more choice. They will be very different projects - a smaller gated community rather than part of a larger community. Some people like to be in a smaller community where they know their neighbours and the service charge is lower. Others like to be in part of a much larger community. Each one has advantages and disadvantages."
G&Co said that it had appointed a contractor and started work on its villa scheme, which will be sold on a freehold basis.The company said it was hoping to announce the name of the new contractor next week. It added that it was financing the project through a loan with a major local lender and hoped to finance the majority of the scheme through off-plan sales.
"We are expecting most of the investment to come from the local market but we also expect some investment to come from the GCC as well," said Joseph Ghossoub, chairman of G&Co. "At the end of the day it's a choice for the consumer. You will have two very projects. Today we are launching a very exclusive project and we'll see about the other one when it is announced."