Drake & Scull unit wins mall extension contract in Dubai

Drake & Scull Engineering said that it had already started work on a 192,000 square metre mall extension, which will include a high rise hotel.

An illustration of the planned expansion at Ibn Battuta Mall. Courtesy Nakheel

A Drake & Scull International unit has won a Dh224 million contract to install mechanical, electrical and plumbing works for a new mall extension in Dubai.

Drake & Scull Engineering said yesterday that it had already started work on a 192,000 square metre mall extension, which will include a high rise hotel and a low-rise podium comprising a hypermarket, cinemas and additional shops.

The project is scheduled to be handed over by 2018.

DSI did not say which shopping centre it was working on or where the new project would be located.

Many of Dubai’s biggest shopping centres are in the process of adding new space.

Key expansions currently in process include a 1 million sq feet extension to Ibn Battuta Mall planned for 2018 that will feature a retractable glass roof over a 300,000 sq ft courtyard and another cinema.

Other planned extensions include extensions to Dragon Mart, The Dubai Mall, BurJuman and Festival City.

An extension to Mall of the Emirates opened last month.

According to JLL, an additional 136,000 sq metres of new shopping space is expected to be delivered to the Dubai market in the remainder of this year, mostly comprising extensions to existing malls.

And the broker expects 403,000 sq metres to come to the market next year pushing average retail rents in the city down.

“We expect that this new space coming to the market, much of which is in the form of extensions to existing malls, is likely to push rents down. This will probably mean that rents for super-regional malls stay flat and rents for everything else falls,” said Craig Plumb, the head of research at JLL’s Dubai office.

On Saturday, the Dubai developer Nakheel announced that it had awarded nearly Dh2.3 billion of contracts to build three new shopping centres in the emirate – the Deira Islands Night Souk, Warsan Souk and the Circle Mall.

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