Meow

The House of Norman Wisdom?

The Dean

"Growth in tourism sector by 13 percent annually and footfall of 44.5 million visitors to Dubai Mall alone in the first nine months of 2012, justify the increased capacity of the planned project, Macadam said."

If that were true, yes - but that's 160,000 per day, and I don't believe that........

The Dean

Looking at the map in the inset explains something else - those who (like me) were wondering if Dubailand would ever even be restarted, never mind finished, need worry no longer: the new development includes most of the 'old' Dubailand.......... that's one way to get investment into a stalled project...........

Meow

Even if it were true, they aren't all spending money.

Boomhauer

Maybee he means they will have cabaret dancers and will offer Jenna Jameson a free villa/penthouse ?
Jenna lives in Las Vegas.

Miss Anne Thrope

Not to mention Meydan City or whatever that was called.

The island in the creek with the Zaha Hadid opera house, dancing towers and cool double span bridge was the most interesting of all the boom-time proposals in my view and that seems to have disappeared without trace as they have mentioned much more modest plans for the creek subsequently. At least that made use of some distinctive aspect of Dubai (the creek) and was trying to do something different than adding another super-mall and an ecologically disastrous park.

A key point here, I guess, is that Emaar is the master developer (I think I heard) which should lend this more credibility (apparently) than the usual culprits for all the stalled/failed projects. And, of course, no time-line.

Anyway, can anyone say megalomania?

busybee2

they were going ahead with one here in abu dhabi, loads of money paid out by the preferred contractors, and then they scrapped it....... going back to the normal tender process etc if and when they put the money back in.

Miss Anne Thrope

Actually, that reminds me. The story I heard back in 2009 was that the best original tender for the Dubai metro had come from Bin Laden construction including full project financing (not sure if it met the definition of PPP per se...) but it was deemed politically unacceptable for a mere Saudi builder to be behind Dubai's big shiny show-off toy (let's face it, that's really what it is). So they went with Japanese contractors and had to finance it directly and that's why there have been so few trains, because they basically ran out of money (remember even the Japanese ambassador complained about non-payment). Insufficient trains means low frequency and thus not enough to sustain a really useful service (never mind the brain-dead failure to integrate the network into developments being built at the same time, particularly Downtown Dubai).

rowell

More knockers on here than in the sun........or even daily mail, a lot of expats may just make a living out of such propaganda

Millhouse

They would never have been able to 'project finance' that project.

Jackwow

"Comprising four key components, the "Mohammad Bin Rashid City" will feature world class leisure facilities and provide an integrated environment for the development of entrepreneurship and innovation."

Don't know what it means so it must be good?

jackthehat

They probably counted both feet, on the way in, and on the way out?

rowell

With airport being a major hub, then obviously all changeover traffic is counted, maybe also most do a 1 or 2 night stop over, there is no doubt in the cooler months, something like Universal Studios would be a major attraction

Blue Cat

Al Ghurair will bring on suicidal thoughts

mikewot

Dubai Airports claims 28% of Dubai GDP and growing.