Getting back to normal

One of the largest development projects in town is the Al Sufouh tram system. When it began, several kilometres of the once-completed Al Sufouh Road from Knowledge Village into Dubai Marina were dug up and diversions were put in place.

Then the global financial crisis hit.

When it did, the general reaction in Dubai was the same as it was in much of the rest of the world. Hit the PANIC! button.

Construction in particular stopped overnight. Companies fired people who they'd need in the near future to maintain the business. Construction sites were abandoned and became derelict. Creditors whistled for their money.

Over the year or so since the panic set in, the city, especially New Dubai, has looked increasingly very much the worse for wear.  Sand and rubbish gathered and weeds started growing on the abandoned sites, the fences and barriers deteriorated.

It looked unattractive when work was happening but since it stopped it's really been ugly.

But the panic subsided, then companies 'restructured and negotiated with creditors'. (That is, they re-arranged their gigantic loans and told creditors that if they wanted to get anything at all they had to take less than was due).

So work on various developments has been re-started, people are being re-hired, the sites are being cleaned up.

Probably because I pass it every day the tram project was in my eyes one of the worst, most untidy looking.

But it looks as though the negotiations with creditors have been successful because for the past few days the project is a hive of activity.

It's a big project, it'll be years before it's finished but it's a relief to see that work's under way once again.

The Australian way

I've posted a few times about the different speed that construction moves at in Oz compared to Dubai. I used as an example the upgrading our council has done of the road we live in.

After about seven years they've finished the roughly one kilometre long road, putting in kerbs and gutters, drains, a footpath and resurfacing the road.

At our house the high bank between the street and our boundary meant they needed to put in retaining walls.

I was pleasantly surprised at how well they'd done it, and I posted this photo sent to me by a neighbour at the time, just before Christmas.


As soon as I got back I realised there was a problem. I should perhaps have spotted it in the photo.

If you drive in from the left side you have to bounce over the kerb/drain to get into the driveway. People who'd avoided damage to their tyres and used the ramp had left their paintwork on the right hand retaining wall.

From the amount of different coloured paint I found on it a good few had scraped the wall.

So I e-mailed the council roads department and explained the problem. The kerb ramp and the retaining walls were out of alignment. I suggested the retaining wall needed moving back about a metre.

Without telling me they were coming they apparently did an onsite inspection and called me afterwards to say they agreed with me.

A stuff up.

Moving the wall would 'cost thousands' so they proposed re-doing the kerb/ramp, which they 'hope will solve the problem'.

Sounds simple and inexpensive, I thought.

On Thursday there was some major activity:

Half the road closed, seven or eight vehicles, a digger, warning signs up all over the place, men with stop/slow signs controlling traffic. A major undertaking, it looked more like they were building a freeway than adjusting a metre of kerb.

It all got too much for some of them too...

Anyway, it took all day Thursday to break up, dig out and remove whatever it was they broke up, dug out and took away.

Today a smaller crew with only a couple of vehicles arrived and by lunchtime they'd finished.

It looks like a lot of effort for this:

When it's dried I'll give it a go and see if it's solved the problem.

Forward to the past

Here we go again...biggest, largest, tallest for Dubai.

Didn't take long did it.

This time it's the replacement Hard Rock Cafe, to be opened at Festival City.

The original Dubai Hard Rock Cafe in Media City closed about eighteen months ago. The new one we're told will have the largest Hard Rock Shop in the world in the largest Hard Rock Cafe outside North America and outside it will have the tallest ornamental guitar in the world at a height of 118 feet.

Just what we need.

Gulf News has the report here.

Yes, but when?

Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid's CNN interview is getting plenty of exposure, especially the 'everything we started, we are going to finish' comment.

I don't doubt it, but the real question for residents suffering from construction fatigue is when.

An example is the Al Sufouh tram line. Nothing's happened for months.




The roads in front of JBR and all the way past Media City, after years of construction, were finished. Then they were dug up. Re-finished. Then dug up again for the tram line.

Then...nothing.

We're left to negotiate several kilometres of abandoned road works.

That's something that clearly hasn't been affected by the meltdown, digging up areas which have, at great expense and to the huge relief of users, been completed.



The same areas are dug up over and over again.

It seems to me that hole digging's one of the very few jobs-for-life these days.


CNN interview.
Projects will be finished.

The non payment problem

The CFO of Arabtec, the UAE's biggest builder, was talking the other day about cash flows improving when the $8 billion support Dubai's government says it will, conditionally, give to Nakheel eventually means the company can start paying some of its bills.

Forget the slowdown, forget winning orders - the major problem businesses here have been facing is non payment of bills.

Almost as bad has been the 'you want payment you give us a 30% discount' contract-breaking arrogance from the big companies. But that's another story...

The most pressing issue was getting money to the major developers to help them pay their bills, get money flowing through the economy, keep projects going, save sub-contractors from bankruptcy, keep people in jobs.

It's happening but it's all taking far too long.

And although the $8 billion to Nakheel will help, it's really only a drop in the ocean.

A couple of stories I've listened to in the past few days illustrate the problem. Both companies doing well, providing the service they were contracted to provide, meeting deadlines, invoicing the agreed amounts.

The clients haven't kept their side of the deal though. Athough they received what they'd ordered they haven't paid for it.

(Isn't that illegal in the UAE?)

One is a small architectural firm. Non payment of invoices has meant they've had to fire all their staff with just the owner hanging on. The decision was whether to write it off as a lost cause and leave Dubai or hang in as long as possible hoping to collect the amounts due.

Hang in there was the decision, which has sort-of paid off. The bills will be paid, but only with a huge, and completely unjustified, discount. Take it or leave it. Discount or nothing.

It's not only a disgraceful way to do business, in my opinion it's nothing less than fraud.

The other is someone working for a sub-contractor. They've been working in the usual chain, for a main contractor who in turn is working for the developer.

He's just been told he's out of work, along with all his colleagues.

They've been working on five towers in one of the prestige developments. The main contractor hasn't been paid for a while so he's called a halt to work on the towers. The developer doesn't pay, no-one gets payed all the way down the chain.

Since the economic meltdown began I've heard many 'experts' saying that a downturn can be good because it clears out the dead wood, gets rid of the cowboys, that the good companies survive.

Partly true, but it also means that many good companies go to the wall, simply because they don't get payed for the good work they've delivered.

Did 'Dubai' do it?

I've been reading some of the reports around the world about the leak at Dubai Aquarium.

They often add the the old property crash/debt crisis/Burj Khalifa lift problem stuff, so they become very negative about Dubai. And of course it encourages the real Dubai/Arab/Muslim bashers to jump in with their comments.

Here's a classic from the Huffington Post for example:

"Coool! Dubai is the farce of modern society. They have everything.... but it's built with our oil money ..... they are NOT a modern society... they are the oppose. People still get flogged for kissing in public, jailed for infidelity, and any other horrific thing you may hav heard about; men whip women on the beach in bikinis, spit on them...and that's just the tip of the sand dune."

Anyone in Dubai recognise the place from that?

But I did enjoy a couple of the other comments:

"It was probably caused by a stray bullet from the not-so-secret Mossad hit squad.

Boy! When things go wrong..."

And:

"Dubai has a lot of problems,,,,,,,,,,,,,, i.e. bankruptcy; closure of their new tower; this.

Is it possible that they themselves staged the hit on the Palestinian murderer to take attention away from its own problems?"

Anyway, that was really an aside, I distracted myself.

What I was going to post about was that while 'Dubai' is taking all the flak there's an important part of the story that isn't included.

'Dubai' didn't make the huge acrylic window, 'Dubai' didn't design the aquarium and 'Dubai' doesn't operate it.

The difference in reporting is interesting.

Buildings collapse in other cities but the stories aren't negative about the city itself.

Toyota has major problems and the negative stories are about Toyota. Not about 'Japan'.

But with the aquarium leak, and other stories about problems in Dubai, it's 'Dubai' itself which takes the hits. In fact, the aquarium problem must surely relate to either the designer and operator, Oceanis Australia Group, or to Emaar.

The viewing panel, which leaked, was commissioned under the supervision of Oceanis Australia Group. I can't find the name of the manufacturer, although there seem to be only three companies in the world capable of producing it. It's the world's largest acrylic panel, 32.8 meters wide, 8.3 metres high, 750 mm thick and weighs 245,614 kg.

When it was commissioned it was, according to Emaar's press release:

"...at the limit of production abilities by major acrylic manufacturers..."

It isn't in one piece though. If you stand at an angle to it you can see where the panels are joined. The panels are apparently fused with acrylic-soluble cement. From what I can gather from the stories it was a joint that was the problem, although the information is vague as usual and I could well be wrong.

I assume the panels were joined in the specialist factory, in Japan or wherever, which built it. Or could it be that the panels were joined here? That might be something that could be (but won't be) clarified by Emaar's PR people.

It would be good to hear from Oceanis Australia Group and from the manufacturer of the window about what happened and why.

I wonder if the PR people from the three organisations are talking to each other and getting factual information together that would stop the speculation...



Huffington Post story is here.

Emaar's original press release is here.

Now Dubai Aquarium has a problem

Following closely on the malfunctioning lifts in Burj Khalifa creating bad international publicity for Brand Dubai we have another bad story.

The huge aquarium in Dubai Mall has sprung a leak, causing an area of about 100 shops to be cordoned off with people told to leave the area.

The Wall Street Journal heads the story "Leak at Dubai Mall Aquarium Forces Evacuation"

It notes that it's: "the latest mishap to hit one of Emaar's prestigious projects. The company was forced this month to close the viewing deck in the world's tallest building, Burj Khalifa, in the center of Dubai."

A visitor from the US is quoted as saying: "It seems that as they're building things here, they're crumbling at the same time."

And the head of Middle East research at UBS AG told the WSJ: "Emaar has always been known as a quality developer, but they've been under pressure to finish Dubai Mall and Burj Khalifa. I'm not surprised that they've had maintenance issues. They've definitely put into question their quality and are compromising their quality over volume."

The news wires have put the story out, it's starting to appear in the media all over the world and the reports use words like 'evacuation' and 'shark tank' to add to the drama.

The Chicago Tribune headlines the story "Dubai's latest blooper".

Even the usually restrained BBC runs the headline "Huge shark-filled aquarium in Dubai cracks open".

Apart from the more serious media I always like to check out what the tabloids are saying, because they have the most readers and so shape much more opinion, sadly.

Predictably, the UK tabloid The Sun screams: "Terror as mall shark tank cracks". It goes on to tell its several million readers: "Shoppers at the Dubai Mall fled in terror fearing that they about to be engulfed by 10 million gallons of water holding 33,000 sea creatures...Mall security men donned life jackets"

And inevitably, according to The Sun: ...anyone with photos of the drama were ordered by cops to delete them."

Too late, the paper has a photo of water gushing from the crack.

Naturally, most of the stories also refer back to the lift problem in Burj Khalifa and to Dubai's debt problems.

It's all doing huge damage to Dubai's reputation and it's becoming a PR man's nightmare.




The Wall Street Journal story is here.

The Chicago Tribune is here.

The BBC has the story here.

The Sun story is here.

Burj Dubai Khalifa official opening

After the big firework/light display for the official opening we at last know the height of the world's tallest structure.


Photo: The National

It's 828 metres, a dramatic increase on the previous tallest building Taipei 101 which is 509.2 metres.

You get some idea of the size of the thing when you see it against other 'normal' skyscrapers...


Photo: Bloomberg. Sydney Morning Herald

It isn't just the height that strikes me but also the mass. Each of those sections at the bottom are the size of a 'normal' tower. It's an absolutely huge building.


Brand Dubai's suffered a loss though because the word Dubai has disappeared from the name. It's officially Burj Khalifa, named after the President of the UAE and Ruler of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

Burj, by the way, is the Arabic word for tower.

The opening has been covered all over the world, naturally, and I've been glancing at comments left on blogs and forums.

Two particular areas, the renaming and the finance, are attracting the usual crowd of the uninformed.

On the renaming there are plenty of comments that it's payback for the Abu Dhabi loans to some Dubai World companies and that Abu Dhabi will now own the building.

The other area is that 'Dubai's bust' and can't afford the building.

There are several things these people don't understand. First, they don't understand that 'Dubai' doesn't own the building, and nor can 'Abu Dhabi'. They don't understand that the developer is Emaar, which is a very profitable company and nothing to do with Dubai World. They don't understand that the building was over 90% sold off-plan, that the individual investors own the building and that their money was used to fund the construction.

It's a fact of life that a complete lack of knowledge doesn't deter people from stridently stating an opinion, confidently expressed as fact but in reality far from it.

The renaming is actually more far reaching, especially for Brand Dubai, than just changing the nameplate on one building.

The city being built around the tower is Downtown Burj Dubai. Presumably that will now be Downtown Burj Khalifa. The Metro station is Burj Dubai Station, which presumably now has to be Burj Khalifa Station. The brand name Dubai has lost a lot of future publicity.

There are other areas which are affected too, such as contracts held by the thousand or so owners, which must say they own part of Burj Dubai and will therefore need to be changed to say Burj Khalifa.

Interesting times.


Reuters have a clip of the fireworks on YouTube, here.

Surprise! The rumours are wrong

Dubai has a much more active rumour mill than anywhere else I've lived. It's always been the same and many of the rumours are simply recycled old ones.

For example, I remember when the Trade Centre opened there were rumours that it was falling over. And the then-new Shindagah Tunnel was about to collapse. Both are still there, in good order, so the same rumours have been transferred to new projects.

There are two current persistent rumours that I can shoot down, relating to the Al Sufouh Tram and the Metro stations.

First the tram. Rumour has it that the RTA has run out of money so work on the tram system has stopped and thousands of workers have been sent home.

In fact the work is continuing as before.

Every day I see trucks delivering concrete parts for the elevated section, which is being completed at a fast pace...






Then the Metro. Word is that the contractor has stopped work on all the stations as he hasn't been paid.

In fact work is continuing as normal...

A different view

Back in February I posted about the changing view from apartments in Dubai Marina. Far from the views buyers expected when they bought off-plan.

The original plans for the Marina, and the city in general, are changed so often that this isn't unusual.

There've been many changes to the original master plan for Dubai Marina and as a result people paying a premium for views often ended up with something very different or even no view.

A big change for some buyers was the introduction of the Metro. For example, the station at JLT was built with its pedestrian bridge across Sheikh Zayed Road to Dubai Marina. Very convenient it will be too, when the station is opened.

I'm not sure the buyers of these apartments will be happy with the convenience though. On the plan they would have seen there was nothing between them and Jumeirah Lake Towers. A nice open space with not a bad view.

Not now:

Preserve, renovate, rebuild?

The other day I took the Metro into Bur Dubai and then had to go across into Deira, so naturally I walked down to the Creek and took the abra across.

The walk took me through Bastakiya, the original part of Dubai that's being 'preserved' by the Municipality.

I'd been in Old Town at Burj Dubai the day before and as I walked through Bastakiya I was comparing the two areas in my mind, and remembering what the old parts of town had been like when I was first here in 1977.

I always carry a little pocket digital camera with me, so I'd taken some photographs in Old Town and I took more in Bastakiya.

I've been rummaging through the few 'old Dubai' shots I have with me - the majority are in store back in Oz - and I'll start with a couple of those, taken in 1978.

Looking across from Deira, it used to be like this:



In both Bur Dubai and Deira there were still plenty of the old buildings, complete with their windtowers, barjeel in Arabic. They were a kind of air-conditioning system, long before electricity was available. They caught the breeze and directed it down into the house.



Narrow alleyways and sand rather than paved footpaths, easy to walk on though because it had been trodden down so hard over the years.



The buildings were basically mud walled, reinforced with lumps of coral. Some of that has been preserved in the renovated Bastakiya, but only in small patches:



Some of the restoration work looks almost authentic:

But a lot of it doesn't. It's all too neat and tidy, there's far too much very obvious concrete, the footpaths are very modern, even in the narrow alleyway sections:

And a lot of it looks, well, modern:



In a strange way the brand new Old Town at Burj Dubai almost feels more authentically old than Bastakiya:

I wonder what the Bastakiya 'preservation' thinking is.

The old buildings presumably couldn't be renovated and preserved, they weren't bult of material that would lend itself to that. But I think it's a shame that the final finish on the buildings, the veneer, doesn't look older, doesn't look more like the original buildings. The modern paved walkways could have been much more like the original alleyways too.

Having said that, it's still an area well worth a visit. There are plenty of interesting little art galleries, museums, restaurants for example, all housed in the recreated buildings. In that sense the Municipality has done a great job, it's a fascinating area to spend time exploring.

One up one down

A couple of pictures I took the other day.

First, better late than never a Civil Defence facility is going up between Dubai Marina and the Tecom free zone.



For years now thousands of people have been living in apartments at the marina, visiting the shops and restaurants and working in Media City, Internet City & Knowledge Village.

There's also Jumeirah Lake Towers and Palm Jumeirah and all the development across the other side of Sheikh Zayed Road, so there's a lot of property and a very large number of people.

There have been fires in the area, including Atlantis and the fatal Fortune Towers blaze, so it's a relief to see that the area will soon be getting the protection of a local Civil Defence facility.

Then something I posted about ages ago, the demolition of Oasis Beach Hotel.

It's still going on, slowly, centimetre by centimetre, and creating a lot of dust across The Walk.

The speed it's coming down suggests it'll be some months yet before it's all gone.

Room with a (changing) view

I've always believed you buy off-the-plan property at your peril. I've never done it.

It all sounds great, especially the cheaper prices than those you pay for a finished property. But you don't see the finish, you don't see the fittings, you don't see the quality, you can't check the soundproofing.

That applies anywhere in the world, and regardless of the promises of the builder those things can be far poorer in reality than you expected.

In Dubai there's an added problem.

Things you weren't expecting get built around you. Things that weren't even planned when you bought the property.

Dubai Marina has a few examples.

Like suddenly finding a Metro pedestrian bridge right outside your windows...




A new interchange is built out of nowhere, like the new Interchange 5.5 at the Jebel Ali end of the Marina, and one of the flyovers is going past your bedroom....



Interchange 5.5 snakes around to JBR too, so people here are getting a whole different view from the one they expected...



I guess some owners are end users and they'd be the worst affected. But even if the owner is an investor he's been hit. The rental and the sale value will have been badly affected by the new view. And noise. And pollution.

There must be a whole bunch of disgruntled owners out there, with presumably no recourse.

The big slowdown

You may have seen the list doing the rounds of various projects announced as being on hold or cancelled.

It lists 57 projects with a total value of nearly US$75 billion. Actually, only seven are listed as cancelled, the rest it says are on hold.

There's also a report today of some research by Proleads, who looked at 1,289 projects in the UAE.

That says projects valued at $582 billion are now on hold, a huge 52.8% of the country's construction.

That's a lot of work not happening. A lot of jobs lost, a lot of investment lost or deferred.

But the other side of the coin is that about half of the projects will continue, about $500 billion dollars-worth.

It's one hell of a slowdown but there's still one hell of a development programme happening.

I've said before that looking at the bigger picture the slowdown is a good thing for Dubai. The more I think about it the more I believe that. I'm not minimising the effect on people who lose their jobs, it's happened to me twice in the past so I know what it means.

Part of the culture of the region is 'it must be now' and that applied to the development of Dubai. Attempting to build in twenty years what took hundreds or more elsewhere.

Some of it's been good, like the groundbreaking work that's pushed the boundaries of engineering. The creation of Burj Al Arab's island and the building itself, new records for construction achieved with Burj Dubai, the building of the Palm Islands and The World. They've all pushed engineers to find ways to do what hasn't been done before.

The problem is that it was too much all at once. Separate cities to form a vast metropolis all being built at the same time. Finished work being ripped up and done again to a different plan. Endless hole digging in finished work to lay yet more pipes for newer projects.

Construction fatigue set in for many of us - probably all of us in New Dubai.

The infrastructure is way behind the development - we still only have one sewage treatment plant, one desalination plant, no real public transport system, chaotic roads, a serious lack of parking, an antiquated postal service, not a good enough spread of police , fire or ambulance services.

The financial slowdown means a much needed slowdown in the frantic pace. It gives an opportunity to get the infrastructure closer to what's needed, catch breath and take stock, maybe even get some real town planning done.


Gulf News' report on the Proleads research is here.

I hope I'm right.

Another landmark from the (my) old days in Dubai.

Lincoln Beach Villas on Jumeirah Beach Road, a bit out of town in those days but highly desirable. They were occupied by expats on the full salary package which included good accommodation with all bills paid.

Those were the days.

A few people are still on those packages but they're becoming rarer and rarer.

Anyway, passing by this morning I was horrified to see construction/destruction.

On closer inspection it seemed as though it was actually renovation going on.

I do hope so, rather than the usual demolition of anything over twenty years old.

Fake, but I like it.

Hadn't been there for a long time, mainly because of the frustrations caused by the traffic, but I ventured to the Burj Dubai district the other day and looked around Old Town and Old Town Island.

Look, I know it's all brand-new fake-old, but I think it's done well and I like it. It has a good feeling about it, you're away from the traffic in most of it, there are shops and restaurants open, landscaping's coming good.

Remember there was nothing here a very short time ago, just a desert area. And Dubai really has very little that's genuinely old. It was a tiny place huddled around the Creek, small buildings made of mud and coral, wind towers the tallest structures.

If you're going to build communities you need the basic shop and apartment spaces which are the interior of buildings. The outside of those buildings can be anything - modern shapes clad in glass, copies of historic European buildings, ultra-modern shapes clad in new materials. Or you can design them to reflect the region. Whichever you choose it's man-made, in a way it's fake.

I like the idea of using designs which reflect the region and its history, which is what Old Town and Old Town Island are.

The entrance to Old Town Island has a large gateway typical of so many Arab cities - not unlike the walled cities which were standard historically in Europe.



Through that first gateway and there's a really nice square, beautifully landscaped, with another gateway at the end.



Through that gateway and the old-style theme continues.

Across the main boulevard to Old Town which again reflects the old architectural style of the region.

Not that it matters to them, but a thumbs up from me for Emaar.

Driving was almost a pleasure...

Off for coffee this morning about nine and it was a bit of a challenge in places, although the worst of the fog was thinning by then. At least there wasn't much traffic about.



But then at about ten o'clock Sheikh Zayed Road was a pleasure to drive along.

I'll repeat that because it's so nice to say: SZR was a pleasure to drive along.

A nice smooth multi-lane highway, almost no traffic and hardly a moron to be seen.

We went to have a look at Dubai Mall, Old Town and Burj Dubai because I haven't been there for a few months. More on that in another post...

Jebel Ali Village - gone.

I'm sure I'm not the only one with fond memories of Jebel Ali Village.

A small hill with villas dotted around, mature gardens, a couple of schools, a small shopping centre.

In the old days we had friends who lived there and it was considered a bit of a trek out from Dubai because it was way out in the desert then.

I've always liked the country village atmosphere...

Here it is this morning:

The construction, or is that destruction, fences are up all around, gates barring access.

I knew that redevelopment was planned but I didn't realise it was under way already.

What a shame.

Tall building or low clouds?

Well you gotta go somewhere...

There's a lot of rain and nowhere to shelter. So find some old tyres, a couple of planks of wood, a sheet of blue plastic and you've got a great place to run to keep dry.



Last time I drove past it was bucketing down and there were six labourers happily sitting inside.