Property Weekly speaks to Marwan Al Qamzi, Managing Director of Palm Jebel Ali
The Palm Jebel Ali has a lot of living up to do. Its sister island, Palm Jumeirah, has redefined what upscale living within a waterfront setting can be, and a must-see for any visitor to Dubai.
But with construction ticking along nicely, Palm Jebel Ali is well on its way to get the infrastructure components slot into place by their appointed dateline.
On the other side, sub-developers have started to announce their projects for the island and no doubt will be looking forward to get access to the sites in the shortest possible time.
While Palm Jumeirah will be a tough act to follow, the people at Palm Jebel Ali can put in all of that hard-won experience to telling effect.
In a chat with Property Weekly, Marwan Al Qamzi, Managing Director of the Palm Jebel Ali, outlines how it is all taking shape.
A slew of private developers are getting set to announce their projects for Palm Jebel Ali. When do you expect the plot handover process to start?
The plot handovers started in October, we will be handing over Phase 1 of Crescent A. That will be around 20 plots. We will complete the handover process by the end of this year.
For Crescent E, the first plot handover will be next year and we intend to handover all of the plots by late June 2009.
We have a couple of serious developers who wanted to start their projects even before the handover, but because of the constraints we have they could only start this month.
Can Palm Jebel Ali's current infrastructure start supporting the heightened construction activity from the sub-developer sites?
Definitely. We have a different strategy at Palm Jebel Ali. This is one of the points that differentiate it from Palm Jumeirah.
We decided to lay the infrastructure prior to the building work. At this point of time the infrastructure is a plus point for the developers as everything has been put in place. The logistics will be much a more easier and there will be no constraints for developers to access their sites.
Will the various hotel development projects marked for the island start simultaneously? Or are you looking to complete the residential component first, as was done at Palm Jumeirah?
Palm Jebel Ali (PJA) is a mixed-used development. We look at it as a city in its own right.
With our plans for the Discovery World theme park, we have to start construction for hotel components as soon as possible. There are a couple of developers who will start developing as soon as we hand over the plots to them.
We have over 21,000 hotel rooms at Palm Jebel Ali and at the Crown island area alone we have over 7,500 rooms, so we need to have hotels ready in time for when the theme parks open in 2012. Developers are very keen to start.
Can you give me details of which hotels will be on the island?
It is too early to give away any names but we have a couple of serious hotels. One of them is Kempinski in Crescent A. We are targeting big hotels, five-star plus.
We are talking to hotels for the time being but have not finalised anything. In my opinion, only the lucky guys will be there. It is the most prime location on Palm Jebel Ali and the Waterfront.
Have the private developers been given a specific timeframe for completion and handover?
Yes, three years.
If I am right, there is also a substantial residential portion being developed by Nakheel direct. What's the status on their development programme?
The plan was to sell 70 per cent as land and we would develop 30 per cent. We are developing all the villas on The Fronds. We have a unique concept for this location but it is still too early to announce.
We are in the process of the concept design. The spine of the PJA is very large compared with Palm Jumeirah. The width of the spine is 500 metres. We are looking to develop in this area and we have reserved a couple of plots on the spine, on the crescent and on the trunk.
Again we are still in the design process. It is early stages yet. We have already started the piling for one of the towers and we will announce sales at a later stage. There will be two towers.
When it comes to construction processes, are you doing anything differently to what was done on the PJ?
With PJA we have started the infrastructure on Crescent A, E and The Fronds and the spine. With The Palm Jumeirah we awarded the infrastructure and the building maintenance and there was a great deal of co-ordination between the infrastructure contractors and the villa contractors.
Here we don't have this issue because we have not started construction until we reach a stage whereby the infrastructure is already laid down and there is minimum coordination between them.
Has the development of the PJA been fully co-opted into your Blue Communities initiative? If yes, what specific steps are you looking at?
All our designs are endorsed by the Blue Community team to ensure all the codes, concepts and ideas are taken care of.
The marine environment at The Palm Jebel Ali is very unique and we are taking extra care. It has one of the few coral reefs in the region and we started construction we did not lose anything. I would say we were 99 per cent successful in this process.
We are planning to make it a unique marine reserve. We have a professional team looking after the fish, the coral and the beaches because it really is a unique area.
Are you more environmentally aware with PJA then what you were with PJ?
I would say we were aware then as well. However, as soon as Nakheel announced the initiative we took the first step to approach the design group to have the first certified Blue Community building. So I would say we are supposed to take credit for this.
Could you give a tentative timeframe for the first residents to move into PJA?
Hopefully we will greet our first residents in 2011.
Are there any major mistakes that you have learned from PJ?
I would say there are mistakes we have made. The major one was the infrastructure.
We underestimated the size of the project. If you look at the map of The Palm Jebel Ali and you compare it to The Palm Deira - it is massive. We learned that we should not underestimate the scale of our projects.
One of the issues we faced with The Palm Jumeirah was that we were accused of being late but we were optimistic with our deadlines. With The Palm Jebel Ali we are more realistic.
Being realistic is one of the biggest lessons we've learned.
