Venice in Dubai

"This will be a city that will potentially have up to two million people and it will have all the features that you would expect to see in a city. In addition to residential areas there will be commercial, retail, some light industrial areas potentially, there'll be parks, and green spaces," he says, promising: "Within each of the various phases of the development there will be facilities; we will give everybody what they need within the development."

While two million residents might strike some as an optimistic figure, Raine is confident that the waterfront development, which is set to be completed in phases over a period of 15 years, will attract a great deal of interest.

"All I can really say is that looking at the two phases we're releasing, the interest has been at such a level that there certainly doesn't seem to be any shortage of demand," he says.

So far, the masterplan for the entire development is ready and work on the detailed masterplan, or phase one and two within that development, has commenced. The completion date for phase one of the waterfront development is set at three to five years from now.

According to Raine, plans to build the canal have been in the pipeline for a number of years, but it was only in the first half of 2007 that Limitless were asked to "take the project to delivery". While originally under Nakheel's remit, the canal project was handed over to Limitless last year.

"There's a lot of work that's been done in developing the original plans and concept of Nakheel's design group. We took that over in June last year. That's where our involvement really started and we've taken it from that point to where we are now, which is actually far more detail on the master planning of the area that Limitless will be responsible for. And we had a preliminary start on some of the construction work," says Raine.

He adds that the scheme has been part of the longer-term development plans of Dubai. Where other projects that the canal passes through are involved, Raine believes that completion time of the waterway should not be largely affected by the completion times of other projects.

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