Tanmiyat unveils Dubai plans

Saudi developer plans to spend Dh800m this year completing projects that were stalled in emirate

Tanmiyat, a Saudi property developer and investor, plans to spend Dh800 million this year completing Dubai projects that stalled after 2008.

The developer, which began work in the emirate in 2006, will spend Dh600 million finishing a 15 million square-foot project in Dubailand that includes 500 villas, 12 residential buildings as well as a mall, schools and a nine-hole golf course, Tanmiyat Chief Executive Officer Mohammad Bin Odah said in an interview on Monday.

“Even with all the hardship the market went through, we still believe in Dubai,” Bin Odah said. “Nowhere else in the Middle East can compete with this city and its ability to draw buyers from different nationalities who feel comfortable enough to make it home.”

The project, named Living Legends, was one of many developments that stalled after the city’s property bubble burst. Buyers will receive keys for the first 150 villas in the second quarter compared with an original deadline in 2010, the CEO said.

“We reduced the prices to every single buyer by between 10 per cent and 40 per cent,” Bin Odah said. “We also consolidated the purchases of buyers. It was our way of telling them we are sorry we are late.”

Completion of the project, set for 2016 will be challenging but work is gathering pace, the CEO said. Buyers from Saudi Arabia and other parts of the Gulf are returning as uncertainty about the king’s succession in Saudi Arabia eases, he said.

Finding a tenant

Carrefour, the French supermarket chain, agreed to become an anchor tenant in the company’s 300,000 square-foot mall set to open in 2017, the CEO said.

The developer will also spend Dh200 million completing two office towers in Business Bay area known as The Exchange Tower and The Court, a 33-story building, he said.