Dubai World Central Retail Districts to be launched in 2009

Dubai World Central (DWC) – the upcoming 140 square kilometres city-within-a-city in Jebel Ali, United Arab Emirates – has confirmed it will launch its retail district plans within DWC Residential City, DWC Commercial City and DWC Golf City in 2009.

As the first phase of this development, Dubai World Central has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with BurJuman, a leading company in developing shopping centres, to cooperate in conceptualising the retail districts within the project. Incredibly, DWC is nearly twice the size of Hong Kong Island.

“DWC’s real estate components cover nearly 40 square kilometres of which at least 20% will translate into retail units,” said Khalid bin Harib, CEO, Real Estate, Dubai World Central. “This will add at least 40% to the existing number of retail outlets in Dubai’s shopping malls which today stand at 3,500.

“The GCC retail market which is worth upwards of US$ 50 billion today is constantly evolving and through the formation of DWC’s retail districts, catering to an eventual population of nearly a million people, we will revolutionise the way the retail market operates. Malls in Dubai currently see over 140 million footfalls annually.”

BurJuman is one of the oldest malls in Dubai with over 800,000 square feet of gross leasable area (GLA) and a total retail size of 2.8 million square feet.

“DWC and BurJuman are an integral part of a booming economy, joining hands to usher in an innovative retail experience to a brand new city, set to be at the heart of new Dubai,” said Eisa Adam Ibrahim, General Manager of BurJuman. “Given the tremendous amount of retail developments currently underway throughout the GCC, the region’s GLA is expected to go just over 16 million square metres by 2010 – by which time DWC will contribute a significant percentage.”

Currently, grading work has been completed on DWC Residential City’s first two phases with construction expected to commence this month.

DWC provides for mid-income housing at DWC Residential City while DWC Commercial City will have a mixed-use development. DWC Golf City is being designed for premium living with all DWC residents having access to the best amenities being developed by Dubai World Central.

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