Emirates City Forum

Dear all,

The meeting was attended in addition to myself by:
Imre,
dwarish, and
MOHIDEEN71.

Because of the limited number of attendees, the discussions in the meeting were informal. To have an effective group we do require a much bigger number of people who are willing to be active in this endeavor. The discussions were limited to the first item in the agenda. We started by comparing Emirates City to other master communities in Dubai to use them as reference to compare achievements and milestones. We all agreed that the closest project to Emirates City (EC) is Jumairah Lakes Towers (JLT) as they have similar number of towers, similar design and structure. JLT has started in 2003 where EC did start in summer 2006. We realized that by comparing the 2 projects, the construction in EC is in a well advanced stage than that of JLT which is basically a positive aspect. We also agreed that EC does not have the coordination problems that JLT has between the construction of the towers and the infrastructure. We also believe that R-Holding is rushing first the construction of rows B and C because its infrastructure as well as lakes is basically between these two rows, so once these towers are close to finish, they will start their infrastructure. We believe that the next important row for R-Holding to finish is D then finally A. We discussed the prospects of appreciation and we all believe that this would be the best project in Ajman and that it will be for Ajman what the Marina is for Dubai. We have agreed that among the developers, only the following are expected to be doing a fine job: R-Holding, Eta Star, BSEL, and Chapal. The rest of the developers are small and unknown. We can not speculate about the results of their buildings or quality of their finishes.

Dwarish raised a very important issue which is beyound the control of all of us. which is the lack of electric power in Ajman and the surrounding Emirates and that such projects have huge power requirements that should be addressed soon as it takes 3 years to build a power station.

This first meeting achieved the goal of having some of the core members of this forum to meet face to face, know each other, exchange views, share their experiences, get more knowledgeable about the details of the project, the developers and master developers. This is a first step that will allow us to achieve our goals. However, we will not achieve much without the help and commitment of the other members.

We adjourned the meeting without deciding about further actions to take as four people can not represent a whole community, yet we concluded on a positive note. We exchanged our mobile numbers. We will try to meet again and we wish that at each meeting we will be joined by more people. Dwarish and Imre will be coordinating their visits to ECto take pictures and get updates from the staff of the contractors. This will help us to be more informed and all we need at this stage is more information to be able to anything in case god forbids any thing might go wrong in this project. Yet again, we are all confident that such a project and specially the above mentioned developers, we expect it to be a success.

With best regards to all

Djamel