EXCLUSIVE: Azizi to finalise Dubai tower plans by end of year

18 September 2017

Developer has taken over the Entisar tower project from Meydan

The local Azizi Developments plans to finalise plans for the Entisar high-rise tower project on Dubai’s Sheikh Zayed road by the end of this year.

“We will be renaming it, redesigning it,” says Farhad Azizi, CEO, Azizi Developments. “There are a lot of things that need to be finalised before I can even talk about it. We will finalise it by the end of the year. A lot has to be done.”

Azizi had invited contractors to bid by 21 August for construction work on the tower. “That was an initial run to get a clear idea of the costs. At the same time the designs have been changing quite a lot. We had proposals on developing it, but not finalised. We had many contractors approach us, but only a few are qualified to build something like that,” says Azizi.

The initial designs for the tower involved the construction of a 100-plus-storey tower that will include serviced apartments, shops, swimming pools and garden areas. It will be built on Sheikh Zayed Road, next to the existing Fairmont hotel. The project was previously being developed by the local Meydan Group.

Meydan had appointed a main contractor for the project in late 2014. Saudi Arabia’s El-Seif Engineering Contracting secured the estimated AED2bn ($572m) contract. It is not clear what the status of that contract now is and there has been little progress on the project beyond the foundations stage over the past three years. Meydan had appointed US-based Ae7 as the architect for the tower.

A MEED Subscription...

Subscribe or upgrade your current MEED.com package to support your strategic planning with the MENA region’s best source of business information. Proceed to our online shop below to find out more about the features in each package.