“I feel like Lawrence of Arabia,” says David Lloyd as he stares down at his
black City brogues, which are slowly filling with sand. The former Davis Cup
tennis player turned property magnate is standing in 40C heat in the middle
of the Dubai desert watching a camel train climb over a giant dune. “The
only difference is that he had it easy compared with what I’m trying
to do.”
Lloyd was in Dubai last month to announce the biggest Middle Eastern deal he
has struck since he founded David Lloyd Leisure 15 years ago and began
building multi-million-pound leisure and property developments in Britain,
Australia and Barbados. He is sinking £15m into the latest property wheeze
designed to transform Dubai into the 24-carat western-style capital of the
Arab world.
Not content with spending its £200 billion oil fortune building the world’s
tallest tower and reclaiming the sea bed to construct £1m villas on islands
in the shape of giant palm trees, Dubai’s rulers want to create the biggest
dedicated residential sports complex in the world, which will form the basis
for the country’s bid to host the 2020 Olympics.
Sports City is a £2 billion, 50m sq ft development — big is very beautiful in
Dubai — that features more than 8,000 new homes, cricket, rugby, football
and athletics stadiums, golf courses, 50-metre indoor and outdoor swimming
pools, a Manchester United soccer school, two hotels and even a branch of
the upmarket south London public school, Dulwich College, which is being
paid £5m to create “the playing fields of Arabia”.
Dubai’s royal family, who run the tiny emirate as if it were a private
company, hope the combination will attract health-conscious British buyers
and wealthy Arabs, not to mention some of the world’s leading sports stars.
Ernie Els, golf’s world number three, has signed up for a £1m villa, while
Tiger Woods, the Williams sisters, Kelly Holmes, the British double Olympic
champion, and Paula Radcliffe, Britain’s world record-holder in the women’s
marathon, are said to have put down deposits for penthouse apartments in the
high-rise luxury tower blocks.
“We’ve had interest from sports people but Sports City will be a real city
where ordinary families can live all year round,” says Lloyd. “Everybody
wants to be healthy these days.”
Prices start at £354,000 for a 3,600sq ft three-bedroom villa at Victory
Heights, the first 25m sq ft phase of the development, which is due to be
completed in 2007. Most villas will have a private pool and come with rooms
for a maid and driver, but membership of the golf course is extra.
Architectural styles are international, which means that whether they are
“Classical”, “Mediterranean” or “Andalusian”, they all look the same.
An estimated 100,000 Britons have already bought second homes in Dubai, mainly
on the Jumeirah Beach coastal strip. Most are attracted by the low prices,
guaranteed sun and pro-western culture. Alcohol is freely available and
westerners are not expected to conform to Arab dress codes.
To attract British buyers to Dubai’s first big inland development, Sports
City’s backers are negotiating with the football clubs Manchester United,
Chelsea and Arsenal — whose new £357m north London stadium is being
sponsored by Dubai’s airline, Emirates — to stage pre-season tournaments.
The British bank HSBC has sunk £45m into the project and is offering
mortgages.
With nothing built yet — stakes in the dunes mark the position of villas,
tees, greens and bunkers — it is hard to gauge consumer interest. But at a
recent launch in Dubai, more than 300 people reserved villas. Jeff and Sarah
Hepworth from Bristol, who have holidayed regularly in Dubai, were attracted
by the sporting, outdoor lifestyle and the service. “We can come and play
golf here while friends and relatives can do their own exercise,” says Jeff.
“The service will be great. In Dubai, you don’t have to breathe for yourself
if you don’t want to.”
Aren’t they worried that, whatever the sporting facilities, 50C summer
temperatures will make it too hot to walk anywhere, let alone play sport?
“We’ve been coming to Dubai for years and for eight months of the year it is
no different from a Spanish summer,” says Jeff. “Besides, we Brits are the
kind of idiots who go out and play golf at 11am in high summer. We’ll do
anything for a bit of colour.”
The scheme’s backers hope that international investors will be attracted by
the prospect of living in what could become an Olympic village. Sheikh
Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Dubai’s crown prince, is a keen sports fan.
He has been slowly building up sports facilities and tournaments — track and
field, tennis, boxing, gymnastics — and believes the country will be ready
to host the Olympics in 2020 with Sports City as the centrepiece.
“It is not a pipe dream, it is doable and Sports City will be at the heart,”
insists U Balasubramaniam, the chain-smoking 56-year-old chief executive of
Sports City, who cheerfully admits he could do with a few sessions in a
Sports City gym. “We have indoor and outdoor stadiums and we have shown
through the Dubai Desert Classic golf and the Dubai Gold Cup horseracing
that we can host big sporting events. How great would it be to know that one
day you would have a ringside apartment at the Olympics with the world’s
biggest sports performing on your doorstep?” Balasubramaniam, like Dubai’s
rulers, certainly talks the talk but can he really run the construction
marathon of building a 50m sq ft development by the end of the decade?
London’s far smaller Olympic bid is scheduled to take an extra two years.
Derek Whyte, Sports City’s construction manager, who works out of a portable
home topped with a minaret, strikes a cautious note. “It will be built, but
it will take longer than predicted,” he says. “Whenever it is completed, it
will be worth the wait.”
Gary Fenchuk, boss of the New York-based East West Partners, which has built
some of the biggest residential sports complexes in America and is investing
£20m in Sports City, agrees it will take time but insists it will be
“superior to anything in the US. The scale makes US developments look
quaint”.
Back in the desert, David Lloyd is marching from stake to stake checking the
location of the indoor and outdoor courts at his tennis academy and
imagining his first tournament. Can a city rise from the dust or will it be
a sand castle in the air? “Think of the success of sports developments like
La Manga in Spain where the England football team train and thousands go on
holiday,” says Lloyd.
“The only difference between La Manga and Sports City is scale and price.
Sports City is bigger, better and cheaper.”
As he climbs into his Range Rover and heads back to the coast he passes
downtown Dubai, where dozens of skyscrapers have transformed a former
fishing village into an Arabian Hong Kong. “Nobody does ambition better than
Dubai,” says Lloyd, gesturing towards the Disney-meets-Aladdin glass towers.
“If they can build a real city like that, they can build Sports City.”
Looking at Arabia’s Manhattan-on-sea, it’s hard not to agree.
Properties in Dubai Sports City will be launched in London this month.
Details via developer Asteco, 00 971 4403 7799, www.astecoproperty.com;
www.dubaisportscity.ae
Buying in Dubai
- Dubai is one of the seven emirates that constitute the United Arab Emirates
- Foreigners can buy freehold property. Buyers and their family qualify for
residency, provided the owner visits Dubai for at least one day every
six months
- All properties can be rented or resold
- There are no local taxes to pay when you buy or sell, but any rental income or
proceeds of sales of second homes are liable for UK tax
- Owners can transfer their property at their death via a will
- Local mortgage firms, including HSBC Dubai and Amlak Finance, provide loans
Prices for a Horizon villa start at £354,000, rising to £495,500 for a three-
or four-bedroom home with two reception rooms but no pool
The largest villa design, at up to 8,500sq ft, the Mirage has five bedroom
suites and a private pool. Prices start at £722,000
