The developer of Doha Festival City is not just aiming to reset the bar for retail in the Qatari capital with the city’s largest shopping mall, it is also demonstrating that large-scale projects can be delivered in Doha.

“What we are doing in Doha is sending a strong message,” says Kareem Shamma, CEO of Doha Festival City. “We are a private sector enterprise with great financing from banks in Qatar and investment from abroad, and we are moving ahead according to programme.”

Doha Festival City is owned and developed by Bawabat al-Shamal Real Estate Company, which is a special purpose vehicle with four primary shareholders: Al-Futtaim Real Estate Services, Qatar Islamic Bank, Aqar Real Estate Investment Company and another private investor.

In June 2012, the firm completed the QR3.7bn ($1.6bn) financing for the project, and since then the focus has shifted to delivery and construction work on the site in northern Doha. The ongoing work is for phase two of the scheme, which involves the construction of the main shopping centre.

Steady progress

“Construction is proceeding on site according to programme, and it is due to be completed and open for trading in September 2016,” says Shamma. “It will be the full mall, which is essentially phase two of the project.”

The main contractor working on site is a joint venture of Qatar’s Gulf Contracting Company and the local affiliate of UAE-based Alec. It was formally awarded a QR1.7bn deal to build phase two after being hired to start work on the substructure in January this year.

Phase two will add to phase one, which was completed in March 2013 and includes Qatar’s first Ikea store. Phase one was built by a joint venture of the local Qatari Arabian Construction Company (QACC) and the local Amana Qatar Contracting Company, which secured the estimated QR300m contract in October 2011.

High standards

The project has also proceeded without any of the health and safety concerns that have been raised about Qatar’s construction industry over the past two years as it gears up to host football’s Fifa 2022 World Cup with billions of dollars-worth of new construction schemes. This is due to maintaining high standards even before new regulations were introduced by the authorities.

“Our philosophy has always been HSE [health, safety and environment] comes first, we have looked at prequalifying contractors who have that as a priority, so it is something that is built into our philosophy anyway,” says Shamma. “It was there before regulations came out, before any regulations changed; it was always high on our priority list.”

The same philosophy will be used for phase three of the project. “Phase three will be the hotel and conference centre,” says Shamma. “It is a five-star hotel and conference centre, and we hope to open that within 10 months of [the completion of] phase two. [The construction of] phase three has yet to be awarded. We are migrating the brand [of the operator] at the moment, we are still with the same organisation in mind but upscaling the brand, so that has delayed the announcement of who the operator is.”

Entertainment factor

Once the mall opens in 2016, one of the main highlights will be the entertainment. “The entertainment component is a significant part of the mall, it is a really fantastic offering and something that not just Doha or Qatar has not seen before, but that the whole region has not seen before because it combines external and internal entertainment,” says Shamma. “The food court is at the centre and from there you overlook all the internal and external entertainment.”

With outdoor entertainment areas, new attractions can be introduced to the region that encompass more physical and sporting activities rather than traditional mall entertainment areas. “The external entertainment has a real physical focus to it, so it is high-thrill physical activities, which we think is quite unique and much more than just the typical offering of arcades; it is something that is quite new and unique to the region,” says Shamma.

Compact site

Unlike Dubai Festival City – which is a much larger masterplanned development that, in addition to a retail centre and hotels, also includes office buildings, residential communities and a golf course – Doha Festival City comprises a shopping mall and convention centre, and that mix has proved to be popular with tenants. By early October, just over 80 per cent of the 250,000 square metres of gross leasable area was taken and about 70 per cent by rental value of the mall was leased.

“What is nice about Doha Festival City is it is a very compact site; it is fairly rectangular and a high-visibility site in a strategic location, which makes for a very efficient layout of the project and its components,” says Shamma. “The mall’s layout is very traditional and a straightforward racecourse-type layout that is very popular with retailers. That has been reflected in the way leasing has been taken up; it has been a real success story.”