Dubai: Dubai International Financial Centre’s (DIFC) expanded masterplan will be completed in 10 years with the addition of 17 new buildings across 10 million square feet and at a cost of Dh15 billion.
Brett Schafer, CEO of DIFC Properties, said more than 50 per cent of the new development was currently in the proposal stage with investors.
Construction is expected to commence by the end of 2014 and once completed 65 per cent of the masterplan will be dedicated to commercial, 20 per cent — or 5.5 million square feet — to residential and retail occupying the remaining.
Schafer said upon completion, up to 20,000 people will be able to work and live in DIFC. There are currently 15,000 people working in the finance district, which will be stretch to a 25,000 capacity once all developments are completed.
Schafer said he was confident tenants would take up the new commercial space to be developed in Dubai’s finance zone. There has been a sluggish response to the overall purchasing and leasing of commercial office space in Dubai despite the emirate’s ongoing hot streak in residential.
Schafer said it wasn’t fair to compare the DIFC to the rest of the Dubai due to its ‘off-shore’ nature as a free zone.
“We’re responding to the global demand because our companies in DIFC are also in London, Tokyo, and Singapore… The vacancy levels in Dubai are not a factor to us. It’s the vacancy levels in London, Tokyo, and Singapore that factor.”
With the expansion of existing companies, DIFC’s Gate district currently is almost capped at 98 per cent occupancy. Schafer said 90 per cent of the zone’s leasable space is currently occupied.
There are more than 1,000 companies operating across an existing 15 million square feet spread, which is closing in on its first decade of operations.