Dubai: Dubai’s super-luxury focused developer Omniyat intends to take its next project ‘out to the waters’, with an announcement expected within days. The plans come as Omniyat and other luxury-focused developers ready for the next set of signature projects in the city.
Omniyat has set multiple records in recent years through its first venture on the Palm – the ‘One at Palm Jumeirah’, where a penthouse sold for a then Dubai record of just over Dh100 million plus. More recently, it came up with the AVA, also on the Palm.
With the planned new one, “what we are doing is follow the vision of Dubai, as we see another opportunity to create something unique,” said Mehdi Amjad, founder and Executive Chairman of Omniyat, who declined to go into specifics over whether the intention is to build a beach-side development or further out on the water.
This comes as Omniyat closes in on putting the final touches to The Opus, a project where it had the late Zaha Hadid provide the distinctive design. “When we launched The Opus in 2006, it was just a desert landscape at Business Bay,” said Mehdi Amjad, founder and Executive Chairman. “I literally did dune rides to get the location – where we now have this 2 million square feet icon.”
Setting record prices for offices
The Opus is split between a hotel (which takes up 30 per cent), offices (60 per cent) and the rest being residential. Recently, one of the offices sold at a per square foot of around Dh3,500, and making this easily one of the priciest office deals Dubai has recorded.
“This happened in the secondary market because from our side we had sold all the office units some time ago,” said Amjad. “What the deal shows is the level of interest The Opus has attracted. It’s unfortunate that Zaha is not around to see this.”
Omniyat still has a few residences to leverage. “It would be about 5 per cent of the remaining units, and we will release this to market shortly,” added Amjad. “Pricing would be around Dh4,500 a square foot or thereabouts.”
The first residential handovers at The Opus will start first quarter 2023. “By now, we have sold almost 80 per cent of these units,” the Chairman said. “It’s taken more than 10 years to put the Zaha vision into reality, but all that effort was well worth it.
“When Dubai came up with all its plans to shape what the city had to offer, entrepreneurs signed up for it. We put our heads down and ran with it.”
Reduce project time
The Omniyat chief said new projects will not stretch into 10 years or more. “Instead, we aim to bring it to about four years, however intensely design led it may be,” he said. “Ideally, from my perspective, we should complete new projects in 3.5 years.”
And that would play well with any property market cycles…
