Dubai Municipality has announced three major construction projects for the emirate, which include a new safari park, a dhow trade infrastructure project and the completion of Business Bay Canal
The Director General of Dubai Municipality, Eng Hussain Nassir Lootah, told reporters that the three projects had won the approval of HH Sheikh Hamdan Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Deputy Ruler of Dubai, and Minister of Finance and Chairman of Dubai Municipality.
The 400-hectare Dubai Safari Project will be located in Al Warqa 5 and will include a safari park, a butterfly park, golf courses, entertainment facilities and recreational areas.
The municipality said it would aim to establish the ?best centre for wildlife in the world? as part of its attempts to lure travellers back to the emirate.
Among the many stages of the project will be the transfer of Dubai?s existing zoo in Jumeirah to a new location.
Another of the three projects, the Dhow Wharfage Development at Deira Corniche, will involve the construction of additional integrated infrastructure to facilitate an increase in dhow trade through Dubai.
According to Eng Mohammed Noor Mashroom, director of the General Projects Department at Dubai Municipality, the project will aim to make Dubai the economical centre of import and export activities in the region and would involve the construction of a 3km-long wharfage between the Deira Corniche and Palm Deira, which would be divided into 30 loading/unloading areas.
The wharfage, which has been designed to a depth of 7 meters below the low-water level, would allow for around 400 dhows of different sizes to berth at the same time and would facilitate the loading/unloading of more than 1.7 million tonnes of cargo per year.
Construction of the project, which has been scheduled to commence at the beginning of June 2012, would require the excavation and dredging of 390,000m? of sand from the seabed adjacent to the wharf site, which would be reused for reclamation works.
Phase 1 of the project, which will cover 60 per cent of the wharf, would be completed and operational within 12 months, while the second phase would be completed by end of 2013.
The final project, the completion of Business Bay Canal and its connection to the sea, was described as an attempt to revive Business Bay Canal as a part of an integrated marine system.
Eng Ibrahim Mohammed Ibrahim Ali Juma, head of the Coastal Engineering Unit at Dubai Municipality, said the project would improve the environmental state of the canal and the upper part of Dubai Creek, as well as attempt to enhance the economic state of the area adjacent to canal.
The project will consist of two phases ? the first involving the connection of Business Bay Canal to the sea through a pipeline system that will connect the sea to the side of canal adjacent to Sheikh Zayed Road, and the second would consist of the completion of the canal waterway through a connection to the existing lagoons.
The municipality has said that the implementation of the Business Bay works would take 18 months following a seven-month design period.
