Emaar plans $3.27bn Dubai Square Business District at Creek Harbour

Dubai, UAE - Emaar is planning a 300,000 sq m commercial and office district beside Dubai Square in Dubai Creek Harbour, a project it values at $3.27 billion (AED 12 billion).

Called Dubai Square Business District, the project forms part of a larger scheme built around the proposed Dubai Creek Tower, which Emaar expects to become the area’s defining feature.

Its office towers will plug straight into two metro stations and into Dubai Square, and the district will hold four hotels and three urban parks of its own. Around it, Dubai Creek Harbour is being built for a population of roughly 200,000.

Emaar said it intends the scheme to be a major business and commercial hub for Dubai Creek Harbour. The company describes the new Dubai Creek Tower as “an iconic global landmark and a defining expression of Dubai’s ambition”.

According to the developer, the tower and Dubai Square together will give Dubai Creek Harbour an identity recognised internationally, and will offer the companies based there a recognisable setting for “their own next chapter”.

Mohamed Alabbar, Founder of Emaar, said: “Some places are built for business. This place was built for ambition. When the history of Dubai’s next chapter is written, it will be written from these towers.”

Transport sits at the centre of Emaar’s case for the district. “Most business districts are near a metro. This one is built on top of it. Two metro stations serve the district directly, and the office buildings are linked straight into them,” the company said in its announcement.

Staff arriving by train will cross a climate-controlled link into the office lobbies, with no car park, taxi queue or midday heat to deal with, Emaar said.

Across the wider Dubai Creek Harbour, three metro stations, 17 bus stops and a 7 km Discovery Loop connect the community. Emaar said employees could live anywhere in Dubai and reach their desks without driving.

The developer also drew attention to the district’s station: “And the station itself is a landmark. Dubai Creek Harbour’s Iconic Metro Station, the highest metro station in the world, rises in soaring golden fins above the creek. It is the kind of front door that tells every client, every candidate and every investor exactly what kind of company works here.”

The station, on the planned Blue Line extension of the Dubai Metro, was designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) to rise to approximately 74 metres.

Emaar also set out its plans for the mall at the heart of the district. “The world’s great malls ask you to visit. Dubai Square invites you to belong. Set to impress the world, it is technologically advanced and ahead of its time: flagship retail, hospitality and entertainment beneath a sculptural, daylit canopy of golden shells,” the company said.

“Unlike a traditional enclosed mall, Dubai Square extends into the city. Its boulevards spill out into the streets where your offices stand, so lunch, a client dinner or a flagship boutique is never more than a few steps away,” it added.

Emaar describes the mall as an open-air mixed-use scheme rather than an enclosed one, its avenues carrying shoppers out to the restaurants, stores and office towers around it.

The plans include drive-through shopping, several entrances and exits, sustainability initiatives and direct access both to the Iconic Metro Station and to Icon Plaza, which Emaar calls the ceremonial heart of the district. Retail, dining, entertainment, hospitality, homes and offices will share one urban district, the company said.

Alabbar said Emaar’s aim was not a conventional business district but an office address that would draw ambitious companies from around the world.

He said: “We did not set out to build an office district. We set out to build the address every ambitious company in the world dreams of. Dubai Square is that address.”

Hotels, parks, homes and waterfront facilities will surround the offices, as Emaar seeks to establish the area as a major commercial centre.

Beyond the four hotels ringing Dubai Square, eight more are planned elsewhere in the masterplan. The district’s three parks join 15 parks and four ecological green corridors community-wide, with 13% of the land left as open space, Emaar said.

The parks named in the release include Sidr Square, Pearl Park, Cloud Gate Park and Lake Park, joined by green and retail axes.

Housing across the masterplan runs to 75,500 homes in upwards of 200 residential towers. Community facilities listed by Emaar comprise 11 mosques, 25 clinics, two hospitals, 14 nurseries, seven schools and over 70 neighbourhood shops.

Residential plots will lie within a five-minute walk of Dubai Square, according to Emaar.

The waterfront gets a 4.5 km promenade and a 600-metre urban beach on the creek, where Emaar said 450 species of flora and fauna live.