First Residents of Dubai's Palm-Shaped Manmade Island Like Their Pricey New Digs
In this photo released by the Nakheel Development, a few villas are seen at the Jumeira Palm Island in Dubai, United Arab Emirates July 10, 2006. The Palm Jumeirah, a 12-square-mile (30-square-kilometer) island group that took five years to raise from millions of tons of Persian Gulf sand and quarried rock, will open to some 4,000 residents by Nov. 30, said Issam Kazim, a spokesman for Dubai's state-owned developer Nakheel. (AP Photo/Nakheel Development, HO)
Four years ago there was nothing here but unbroken sea. Now there's Andrew Dukes and his luxury mansion sitting on a palm-shaped, manmade island the first of about 100 houses to open here.
"I got exactly what I paid for and I'm very happy with it," said Dukes, 43, a tanned Englishman who just moved into his colossal home on Palm Jumeirah, Dubai's greatest-yet construction project.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Palm Jumeirah is expected to the complete by early 2006 and is built as a serene and luxurious place for living and relaxation, a leisurely retreat wi
Palm Islands Dubai - Jumeirah, Jebel Ali, Deira
Known collectively as The Palm or Palm Island Dubai they are man made islands. There are three islands under construction The Palm Jumeirah, The Palm Jebel Ali, and The Palm Deira.
Palm Jumeirah is expected to the complete by early 2006 and is built as a serene and luxurious place for living and relaxation, a leisurely retreat with peace for ambience. It will include 2000 villas, 40 luxury hotels, shopping complexes, cinemas, and first Marine Park in the Middle East.
Palm Jebel Ali is slated for completion towards the end of 2007. It is being designed as a place of excitement and entertainment. It will include water themed entertained around a Sea Village that will feature a water park with killer whales, dolphins, and aquariums.
Palm Deira will stand in waters 6 meters deep and reaching 22 meters below sea level. The island will be reclaimed from different points in the seabed. Approximately one billion cubic meters of sand and rock sources from, and around, the UAE will be used to create Palm Deira.
The Palm Island, Dubai will take the shape of 17 fronds of the palm tree surrounded by 12 kilometers of barrier reefs reaching out 5 kilometers into the sea south of Dubai city. More than 120 kilometers of sandy beaches, all reclaimed from the sea.
The total land area of the Palm Island is 80 million cubic meters and it will be visible from the moon without the need of a telescope. Every villa on The Palm will have its own beach and swimming pool. All the homes being constructed are inspired by international architecture. The Palm will provide buyers with many designs and styles.
The environment around The Palm will be made secure with the use of new technology and security features that have set new standards for the building industry worldwide. They will also have all the modern amenities like Internet access, cable TV.
Unique elements like private swimming pools, beaches, gardens with landscaping, paved drive-ins, etc. make the Palm Island Dubai homes stand out from the rest of the property available everywhere else.
The Village Center is also planned to provide residents with all daily requirements through supermarkets, laundries, pharmacies, parlors and salons, restaurants, etc. As of February 2006, the sale of apartments and penthouses on the last complex on the western side of the Trunk of The Palm Jumeirah has started. The compound is surrounded by water on three sides and have seven uniquely designed buildings.
The seven buildings reflect the theme of the Jewel with each building named after a luxurious jewel Emerald, Ruby, Aquamarine, Diamond, Sapphire, Amber, and Tanzanite.The Palm Island is greater than the cities of Paris and Manhattan. Many celebrities and public figures have already bought homes here.
Dubai’s artificial, palm-shaped isle takes root
In this photo released by Nakheel Development, construction goes on at Jumeira Palm Island in Dubai, United Arab Emirates
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - With 14,000 laborers toiling day and night, the first of Dubai’s three palm-shaped islands is finally about to get its first residents.
The Palm Jumeirah, a 12-square-mile island group, is part of what’s billed as the largest land-reclamation project in the world, the product of five years of brute hauling of millions of tons of Persian Gulf sand and quarried rock.
When fully complete by 2010, the Palm Jumeirah will be an offshore city, with some 60,000 residents and at least 50,000 workers in 32 hotels and dozens of shops and attractions, Nakheel said.
Observers say they are surprised that the fledgling developer has been able to build such a complex project more or less as planned, albeit with several snags that delayed the opening from last year.
“The project has captured people’s imagination,” said Colin Foreman of the Middle East Economic Digest. “Nothing like it has been done anywhere else in the world.”
Nakheel’s four island projects, the world’s largest land reclamation effort, are reshaping Dubai’s stretch of the Gulf coast.
The $14 billion project is a key part of this booming city’s ambitions to rival Singapore and Hong Kong as a business hub, and surpass Las Vegas as a leisure capital.
The frenetic pace of development has utterly transformed Dubai from a sleepy trading and pearl-diving village in the 1950s to a flashy metropolis of 1.5 million.
The island’s construction has not all been smooth, and most buyers were supposed to get keys to their island homes a year ago.
That sinking feeling
Some of the new land sank and Nakheel needed an extra year to add more and pack it with vibrating land compactors, Kazim said.
Reports from those who have wandered through the island’s giant homes describe them as cheaply finished and set uncomfortably close to one another. Nakheel rejected an Associated Press request to visit the island.
Overburdened roads in Dubai’s Jumeirah Beach neighborhood are expected to clog further as people begin moving onto the island, accessible, for now, by a single bridge. Mainlanders have already put up with years of road works and innumerable trucks hauling boulders to the island.
Those moving onto the Palm Jumeirah this year will have to live with construction for another three years, and then an influx of tourists. Most of the owners are foreigners, with Britons making up the largest group, Kazim said.
Meet the first resident of Dubai's palm-shaped man-made island
Four years ago there was nothing here but unbroken sea. Now there's Andrew Dukes and his luxury mansion - sitting on a palm-shaped, man-made island - the first of about 100 houses to open here.
"I got exactly what I paid for and I'm very happy with it," said Dukes, 43, a tanned Englishman who just moved into his colossal home on Palm Jumeirah, Dubai's greatest-yet construction project. 
When finished, Palm Jumeirah will number about 120,000 residents and workers spending their days on an island made of rock blasted from nearby mountains and sand dredged from the bottom of the Persian Gulf.
Each of the 100 mansions sits on a kilometre (half-mile) long palm frond, packed in among dozens or sometimes hundreds of others.
Sharing close quarters with his neighbours doesn't bother Dukes, formerly an executive with a London-based Internet company.
"Living in London you're absolutely on top of each other. So if you're English-European coming here, you think the plot size is more than adequate," he said. 
Dukes paid over £500,000 for his house just over a year ago. It is now worth almost twice that. He spends his days discovering uses for the large expanse of water that starts a few meters from his back door.
"I've been kayaking ... and I'm going to do windsurfing next," he said.
The first of Dubai's many ongoing mega-projects has literally changed the shape of the United Arab Emirates, re-contouring its coast with a new island mass that has altered sea currents and marred the once unbroken sea view from Dubai's natural beach.
The entire coastal development, led by Dubai government-owned Nakheel, includes three massive palm-shaped islands along with a cluster of 300 islets built in the shape of a world map. All are built mostly of bright sand dredged up from the seabed
The largest of Dubai's ongoing reclamation projects, the Palm Deira, is still being raised from the sea floor.
Nakheel claims that the Palm Deira will be the world's largest reclaimed island, with more than one million people eventually living or working there.
But that figure is called into question by frequent alterations in the island's design over the past two years.
Another island, the Palm Jebel Ali, is 90 per cent reclaimed but building has yet to start on its homes, resorts and hotels. Only the smallest of the palm islands, Jumeirah, has begun to be populated. 
Still under construction are the Palm Jumeirah's 32 hotels, monorail, water theme park, and the Trump International Hotel and residence tower.
The developments are central to Dubai's property boom. Properties on the Palm Jumeirah, the first to be opened, have skyrocketed in value after being sold and resold before even being built.
But the smaller islands of the third project - The World - haven't fared so well. Three years after their sales launch, just 45 per cent of the islets have been sold, for prices ranging between £5 million and £22.5 million, Nakheel said.
The luxurious islands are part of a government plan to attract tourists and lure foreign cash into the tax-free economy.
Dubai's government has identified tourism and real estate developments as key sectors to break the emirate's dependence on high oil prices to buttress its economy.
Other nations in the region, including Qatar and Oman, as well as the Emirates capital Abu Dhabi, are quickly borrowing from Dubai's model to develop similar, albeit less dramatic, plans.
The construction of the Palm Jumeirah has already created a national asset worth as much as £11.5 billion, said Nakheel chief executive Chris O'Donnell.
Despite its opulence and ambitions, few global celebrities have been lured to buy second homes in Dubai. British soccer stars, including David Beckham, have bought properties on the Palm Jumeirah, according to Nakheel's website.
Others are said to have taken a look. Nakheel's website claims pop star Michael Jackson, supermodel Naomi Campbell and actor Denzel Washington have shown interest.
The developers say the first 4,000 condos and homes sold on Palm Jumeirah went to citizens of the United Arab Emirates and other Persian Gulf countries.
Britons accounted for about 25 per cent of the buyers with the rest from 75 different nationalities, including several Americans.
Buyers are a mix of speculators, long-term residents and people wanting a vacation home, developers said.
Not all the residents of the Palm Jumeirah are mega-rich. One section serves as a labor camp for the thousands of construction workers who toil in the baking sun.
They will gradually be moved out as the project nears completion in the next three to four years.
The project has not been without problems. A full year's delay was caused by settling of the island's new land. Nakheel solved the problem by adding more sand and hiring a Dutch firm to compact it with vibrating machines.
In June, a large fire broke out in a half-built apartment building, injuring three workers.
Some residents have complained about delays in getting their houses. Others complain that Nakheel is squeezing extra profits out of the island by packing in far more houses than their sales brochures showed.
A broad highway bridge links Palm Jumeirah to the mainland's road network. The monorail with four stops is due to be completed next year, according to Nakheel.
Plans call for five clubhouses, each with gyms, restaurants and shopping on the island. The main shopping center will be built at the tip of the trunk, where the Trump hotel will be located.
Nakheel puts the delays down to the massive engineering tasks they face in building an island like none before it.
"With Palm Jumeirah, which is unique in its nature, there are developments along the way, like the decision to vibro-compact the sand," O'Donnell said. "Most customers are understanding of the delays."
Aggravation has been tempered by the massive increase in house prices since the properties hit the market. Many houses have tripled in value, at least.
And as long as property values continue to rise, owners seem willing to put up with the inconveniences.
"I paid about £380,000 three years ago, it's worth about £1.25 million now," said Dr. Ossama al-Babbili, a Dubai-based pathologist. "Every day I'm getting one or two offers, but I like to live here, it's beautiful."
O'Donnell points to the price increase as a sign of the venture's success. "This is something people said couldn't be done," he said. "Well it's been done."
Dubai's palm island hit by blaze
A fire in Dubai has damaged buildings and injured three people at a huge man-made, palm-shaped island being developed off the coast.
The fire burned for about two hours, sending smoke billowing over the luxury Palm Jumeirah project and along the beachfront districts of Dubai.
Reports said the blaze started in the basement of an unfinished tower block.
One report quoted firefighters as saying an electrical fault was to blame.
In January, four workers were killed when a fire broke out at another building site in Dubai, prompting calls for an improvement in safety standards.
Sunday's fire broke out amid a group of apartment blocks on the 2km-long Trunk of the island, which is shaped like a date palm tree.
Hundreds of labourers were evacuated from the scene. One construction worker was hospitalised and two others treated at the scene for smoke inhalation, officials said.
The Palm Jumeirah is part of a $14bn project to build several man-made islands. Some 14,000 labourers are working on the project to build the island group.
According to the company developing the island group - state-owned Nakheel - Palm Jumeirah was built using 100 million cubic metres of sand and rock, and is large enough to be seen from space.
