Luxury villa development announced for Meydan City

The developer behind Dubai’s Meydan City has announced another residential complex to be built within the 3,700,000 m2 zone.

To be fully developed by G&Co - the development company of advertising man Joseph Ghossoub - the AED1.2 billion (US$327 million) Millennium Estates will comprise of 198 luxury villas built over 3.8 million square feet.

Three styles of villa will be offered, with sizes varying between 5400-6800sqft.

The gated community will occupy the southern extension of the Meydan City masterplan area, next to the grandstand.

Construction already has started, with completion scheduled for late 2015, but the companies would not reveal who the contractor was.

Millennium Estates is the second residential project to be built within Meydan City, with the company announcing in October a “green living” project featuring canals, lagoons and horse riding trails.

Meydan head of commercial and free zone Mohammad Al Khayat said more details of that project would be revealed shortly.

G&Co bought the land where Millennium Estates will be built from Meydan in 2010. Meydan will build the roads and infrastructure to service the development but will have no involvement in the residences.

“When we announced the land purchase agreement with Meydan three years ago many people were doubting the project and even thought that it would never see the light of day but we never did,” Ghossoub, who is chairman of the company, said.

The villas will offer “the best of fine suburban living” and would be an “aspirational residence” claim developers.

Ghossoub said the villas would be sold for an average AED1063 per square foot.

The properties would be targetted at high net worth end-users but he said the contract would not include a clause designed to prevent “flipping”, the rapid on-sale of a property.

Several other developers, including Emaar, have moved to include such a clause to prevent inflated property prices.

“It’s his own property and he’s free to do anything with it,” Ghossoub said.

He was not concerned that Millennium Estates would be built at the same time as Meydan’s own green living development, which will be much bigger but slightly less luxurious.

“It’s a choice at the end of the day,” he said. “Today you have two projects and you have the choice to choose one of them.”

Al Khayat also denied the projects would compete against each other.

“I don’t think it’s competing but it gives the end users a bigger choice, so they have the choice between ... a smaller gated community (Millienium Estates) or being part of a larger gated community,” he said.   

Ghossoub said there was enough room in the market for both projects.

The Dubai property market – which plummeted during the financial crisis – had “never been better than it is today”, he said.

“We believe that Dubai has strong fundamentals that will help it persevere and bounce back,” he said. “The Dubai real estate market has shown incredible resilience over the past few years and we believe it will only go from strength to strength.”