Oman launches $15bn Blue City.

(From Gulf Construction)

Muscat The Omani government in partnership with private investors unveiled the $15 billion Madina Al Zarqa (Blue City) - its most ambitious project yet - early last month

Sprawling over 35 sq km, this project, which is gearing up for a kick-start by the end of this year, will offer numerous investment opportunities not only to Omani nationals but also expatriates. Designed to open up tourism and economic avenues in the region, the unique project is set in one of the most interesting of landscapes in the Arabian peninsula. Blue City features tourist resorts as well as extensive education, healthcare and sports facilities, which will be constructed in multiple phases, making it a tourism and business destination of national, regional and international relevance. "These are aspects that work hand-in-hand with tourism but go beyond it," Heiko Achilles, CEO, ReeMoon Real Estate Development - owner representative and development manager for Blue City, told Gulf Construction. To be built along the Al-Sawadi seafront, 100 km northwest of Muscat, the project is being created to permanently house 200,000 people upon completion in 2020. "It's a huge development which requires a phased approach. However, most of the jobs would be fast track. Even the whole planning, feasibility study, research, design and financing process has taken only seven months which is an achievement on its own. Multiple firms were hired to work on parallel tasks and at the end their efforts were pooled to bring the project to the launching stage," he mentions

The seafront site of the project - approximately 30 minutes away from Oman's international airport and 45 minutes from capital Muscat - will unfold a building density of over 10 million sq m gross floor area when work starts on several, market-determined phases in the next five to 10 years. Construction of new infrastructure and first seed-phase projects will commence in the fourth quarter of this year and focus on hotels, residential and other tourism- related uses in the high-end market segments. The project site lies within a triangular peninsula framed by two wadis having a total of 15 km of natural sand beach coastline with a generally flat topography, sand dunes in the southern part of site and deep seawater creek to the northeast of the site

The ...