JUST outside Cairo, on the road from the Giza Pyramids to the 6 October City industrial zone, lies Dreamland. The residential, leisure, entertainment, sports and shopping complex, which will eventually cover 2,000 acres of land reclaimed from desert and disused quarries is the most ambitious undertaking to date of Ahmed Bahgat, one of Egypt's leading industrialists.

If successful, it will be the focal point of a vast new suburban extension of Cairo starting to take shape on the fringes of the densely-packed Egyptian capital. Much depends on whether the villas and apartments that are sprouting up out of the empty landscape will find the buyers, and whether the shops, theme park, cinemas, theatres and sports facilities will attract the customers.

The project will cost an estimated úE 9,000 million ($2,640 million) over the 10-year construction period, which started in 1996, according to Amr Assal, who manages the scheme from a hangar-like structure close to the recently opened theme park. He says it is the first project of its kind anywhere in the world to combine so many elements. The eventual target is nothing less than to establish 'the Orlando of the Middle East'.

Dream Park is Bahgat's answer to Orlando's centrepiece, Disney World. The theme park opened its gates for the Eid al-Fitr holidays at the start of January, and Bahgat's staff say it has been thronged with visitors ever since. Even on a chilly Monday afternoon in February the rides were busy, as the park provides a rare opportunity for Egypt's schoolchildren and teenagers to find entertainment outside the home. The price of entry is úE 40 ($11.50), and includes access to all the rides and a packed meal. Public relations manager Ahmed Shoukry says visitors usually make a day of it. 'We have people who stay here for 11 hours.' He says the record number of visitors in a single day stands at 30,000.

Just to the south of the theme park, the Saudi Binladin Group (SBG) is working on the Dreamland megamarket, according to a úE 62 million ($18.5 million) contract signed in mid-1998. It consists of two large circular buildings which will contain megastores, linked by a zig-zagging corridor of smaller shops. Next door will be the Dreamland shopping resort, a much larger complex of department stores, cinemas, theatres and restaurants. The contract to build this is expected to be awarded in mid-1999. The project manager for these schemes is Egydan, a joint venture between the Bahgat Group and Denmark's Monberg & Thorsen.

Next to the shopping resort site is a tennis court complex, which is planned to host major international tournaments, and a golf course which has just been completed. Under construction overlooking the course is a 209-room hotel for which a management contract was signed with Hilton International of the UK in January. It is being built by the local Arab Contractors (Osman Ahmed Osman & Company) and is due to open at the end of 2000.

All these facilities only take up about a quarter of the whole Dreamland area. Most of the remaining space is given over to villas and apartments, the first batch of which are now being built and marketed. These residential zones will be served by a specially built hospital and schools. Also to come are a health spa, an equestrian arena, a 20,000-seat amphitheatre, a business park and a manmade canyon, which will involve filling disused quarries with water and landscaping the surrounding area.

Assal says top international consultants have been used for Dreamland's planning and designs. They include the UK's Bovis for the overall planning and phasing. The Canadian team which designed the Universal Studios at Orlando helped with the Dreamland theme park. International contractors have been required to take part in major elements on the complex, such as the megamarket and the shopping resort.

Towards the end of last year, Bahgat's marketing campaign for Dreamland went into top gear. Assal says the response from prospective buyers has been highly encouraging. The smallest properties are apartments of 67 square metres, which are being offered at úE 90,000 ($26,390), he says. The most expensive, luxury apartments will cost úE 800,000 ($235,000), and the villas are going for úE 420,000 ($123,000). Bahgat's real estate investments are not confined to Dreamland. He is also a founder shareholder in the nearby Beverley Hills development being carried out by 6 October Developmen & Investment Company (Sodic), with Turner Steiner International of the US working as project manager. The Bahgat Group is also one of the first batch of developers in the East Port Said investment zone.

But the biggest individual commitment from Bahgat is Dreamland, and the question most commonly posed by analysts is how secure the financial underpinning of the scheme is. Bahgat's core business is consumer electronics. The group produces televisions and video recorders under its own Goldi, Prince and Newstar brands. It ended its association with South Korea's LG Group last year, but still maintains licensing agreements for some of its products with Grundig of Germany and Philips of the Netherlands. Bahgat also produces a range of refrigerators using its own technology conceived by the group's research and development unit.

These businesses have been consolidated in International Electronics Company, which raised úE 150 million ($44 million) in a public share offering in 1998. The company has turned over úE 201 million ($59 million) in the first nine months of 1998, reporting a net profit of úE 42 million ($12.3 million). Bankers say the possibility of a share flotation for Dreamland has been discussed, but no action has been taken so far. As a consequence, few financial details have been revealed. 'It is financed by equity and debt, and will eventually be self-financing,' says Assal.

Bahgat himself perfected his knowledge of electronics at the Georgia Institute of Technology, in Atlanta, obtaining a doctorate. His backers will surely be hoping that he avoids the fate of another famous, albeit fictional, Georgia Tech graduate - Charles Croker, the hero of Tom Wolfe's A Man in Full, whose downfall results from over-ambitious real estate investment.