Omniyat Properties reveals new generation of premium real estate

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Since its inception, the company has already launched two residential and five commercial projects valued at over Dhs5bn making it one of the region's fastest growing property developers.

Two new plots of land in Business Bay, facing the widest part of the Dubai Creek, with a built-up area of 700,000 square feet will be used to develop an Dhs1.5bn premium office complex similar in scale and quality to Omniyat's hugely-successful project, The Opus, which has been 80 per cent sold out since being first revealed in London five months ago. This new double-plot project will be ready for launch early next year.

Located on Dubai Waterfront - a master development by Nakheel - another new project will face the Palm Jebel Ali and will occupy one of the largest single plots of land available on the main beach front in an area to be known as Madinat Al Arab. It will be designed by a star architect, guided by Omniyat's creative and innovative in-house Product Design Team.

Already, Omniyat Properties is working with some of the world's top international architects in Europe and the United States on designing a 2-billion-dirham multi-use real estate project on this plot of land.

The 1.5 million square foot project will include a 6-star hotel, residential apartments, serviced apartments and a shopping mall. All the apartments and hotel rooms will have a sea view, and will enjoy private access to the beach. Residents in the project will enjoy a public park which separates the plot on one side from the adjoining plot.

At the other end of Dubai, in The Lagoons master-plan being executed by Sama Dubai, a subsidiary of Dubai Holdings - Omniyat Properties has acquired four side-by-side creek-facing plots of land which overlook the Flamingo Wildlife Sanctuary on the east end of the Dubai Creek, just a couple of miles from the Business Bay.

Omniyat is currently organising a competition among four leading architects to design a 1.4 million square foot project in The Lagoons. Four plots of land will be used to create one massive project with a value of more than Dhs2.5bn. It will have a residential element, a serviced apartment's element, a retail element and a hotel element.

The launch date is expected to be around the start of the second quarter of 2008, with a hat-trick of launches in the first quarter of the year. The three projects have a total area of 4 million square feet and have a value of Dhs6bn.

'As a comparison,' says Omniyat Properties' CEO, Mr Mehdi Amjad, 'our first five projects in 2006 had half the area of these three projects - around two million square feet - and less than half the value, as the total value of One Business Bay, Bayswater, The Binary, The Gemini and The Square combined is around Dhs2.8bn.

'The value of the two projects - The Pad and The Opus - launched this year is around Dhs2.2bn,' he added. 'The Pad is the project to date of which we are the most proud. It's a clear example of our innovation in design and concept, as we had come up with the concept of a building that reflects the aspirations of what is known as the iPod generation. The Pad is the world's most technologically advanced building and has been virtually sold out at a premium price.

'We are very happy to know that investors who have bought early have seen the value of their investment appreciate by more than 50 per cent in a matter of a few months. And as The Pad becomes even more famous around the world due to newspapers reporting about it, we are attracting new investors and buyers from countries as far away as Japan and Korea in the East and America and Venezuela to the West.'

Although the three new projects will not be unveiled at this month's Cityscape Exhibition, Omniyat Properties will be represented there with a pavilion showing off The Opus, which will be making its Middle East premiere; and its architect, Zaha Hadid has been invited to come down from London for a media gathering at Omniyat's Cityscape Pavilion.

Mehdi Amjad also told the delegates present at the special conference, held at the Burj Al Arab, that Omniyat has recently been very busy, increasing its staff to over 120 people, taking over the top floor of the Burjuman Business Tower for its Corporate Headquarters, implementing a number of corporate governance steps and examining its brand image - asking the basic questions as to what makes Omniyat Properties stand out from the crowd.

'Two things came out from our research: Technology and Innovation,' said Mehdi Amjad. 'While technology has always been at the heart of our brand, we realised that we always used Technology in an innovative way, to improve the way people live and work in the future. We are not, and never were, developing new technologies. But we used creative and lateral thinking to integrate existing technologies in our homes and in our offices.

'So, we are really an innovation brand. And that's what we will continue to demonstrate with our coming projects, as we continue to lead the field and raise the bar even more for the competition.'