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The first 24 floors have six apartments per floor including two double bedroom apartments with an area of 158m² and four three bedroom apartments with an area of 203m². The next 24 floors comprise four three bedroom apartments with an area of 280m² per floor and of the last 24 floors, 12 floors are duplexes, including 48 duplexes in total.
Each duplex is 536m², which include a plunge pool and Jacuzzi and internal elevators to run between the two levels. In addition, they throw in 8 levels of parking and a number of podiums and service floors. And to, literally, top it all, there’s a 66.5m mast to crown the tower.
Looking quite unperturbed about the senselessly plush duplexes Ranganatha says, “We call them hanging villas. Each duplex has four bedrooms and its own little plunge pool measuring 6.7m x 2m plus an internal elevator.”
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He continues, “An amazing fact of engineering is that these plunge pools have helped in the stability and dampening of the building. It has helped us to avoid having to bring in any external dampers. This will probably be the only tower in the world that will have 57 pools and 62 elevators in a single tower.”
Pretty impressive, one would think, but what’s the catch? Have they got you with parking costs? “We haven’t charged for parking at all,” Ranganatha says quickly. “We gave parking with the apartments. Every apartment comes with a dedicated parking space and with the facilities we’ve offered our rates are also very competitive and reasonable.
It’s not like we’ve increased the price of our apartment because we’re giving parking with it, no!” Sixty two elevators may sound like a lot but are they efficient? “The Mitsubishi elevator system is more than efficient,” he says. “The maximum waiting time is 42 seconds on any floor.”
A burning issue that has angered many residents, who have bought in Dubai Marina, is the erection of additional towers in front of existing ones and blocking out promised views. Ranganatha insists that this is not the case at the 23 Marina. According to him the only tower next to it is a 32-storey one that “won’t do much damage to any views.”
With work on the tower in full swing is it normal for waste to be lying around? What about waste management? “The problem is due to RTA restrictions on trucks on the road during the day so we can only clear out the trash in the evenings,” explains Ranganatha.
“It’s the contractor’s safety department that takes care of all the waste, housekeeping and safety procedures including health and safety for the workers which we take very seriously.” Health and safety is first on any good construction site agenda and the 23 Marina site appears to be one of them. If human life is valued, then one can expect other good things to follow including the quality of build, worker rights and eventually customer satisfaction.
“Our customers are at the heart of our development,” confirmed Ranganatha with an example to prove it. “When we sold the apartments initially, we sold the bathrooms with the usual ceramic tiles but then with some good deals we managed to acquire marble instead so we’ve replaced the tiles at no extra cost.
“Also, one thing that you can’t help but appreciate about the management is that they go for the best. You’ve probably never seen a client that has done as many tests on the marble as this one, before selecting it. Every possible type of test has been conducted on this marble,” he added.
Ranganatha also says that unlike a few developers who open their towers to owners to move into during the last stages of construction, they will wait until all work has been completed, due to reasons of health and safety and noise pollution.
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