Timing is everything

Ziad El Chaar, Damac's GM

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Damac Properties started operating in new markets and stopped launching new products before many rivals – both of which have produced results. Here, Ziad El Chaar discusses survival, credit markets and good contractors.

A downturn can change the priority of a whole market. The rise and rise in the building sector for many years of the last decade in Dubai saw projects launch nearly every week; new deals were struck, designs were drawn up and tomorrow became the new today.

A sharp market correction shortened that future-gazing. As credit markets applied a freeze to the construction supply chain, the priority became not dreams on a drawing board but the gritty reality of finishing projects and securing income.

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Damac Properties, perhaps in equal parts lucky and far-sighted, put a halt to their new projects earlier than the depth of the downturn, in 2008. Since then, says Ziad El Chaar, general manager, the focus has been on construction and delivery.

“In the last nine months we’ve awarded 20 projects which have a value of US$3.6 billion,” he says in the company’s temporary sales office in Dubai's Media City, a plush marquee containing models of their towers in stand-alone glass cabinets.

“This translates from the projects launched in 2007 and 2008 to now focus on the building and delivery of those projects. It was at that time when we thought: here is the right time to stop – now is the time to complete what we launched. 2007 and 2008 were very strong for us and the market, but market dynamics change.”

Some of its most eye-catching work is in its home emirate. Dubai Marina (Ocean Heights, Marina Terrace, The Waves), Palm Islands (Palm Springs, Palm Terrace), Jumeirah Lake Towers (Lake View, Lake Terrace), and projects in the International Media Production Zone [IMPZ] (The Crescent, Lago Vista), the monolithic Dubai International Financial Centre (Park Towers) and the Discovery Gardens (Terra Del Sol 1 & 2), represent a roll-call of the city’s big projects as the group aims to fulfill the residential demand.

Though the developer is synonymous for some with Dubai, it operates in 20 countries. Part of DAMAC Group, the real estate arm of that business had plans to expand into new markets since its inception, and early ventures into Lebanon and Egypt, among others, are now also coming to fruition in the form of contract awards.

For El Chaar, these markets represent a combination of domestic demand and existing development plans coupled with the creativity of an incumbent company.

At the centre of Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, for example, is Solidere, the company developing and reconstructing the capital district.

Last month Damac awarded the enabling work contract to Zetas Apex Foundation Technologies SAL for Damac Tower, its first project in Solidere’s area, which will see the firm work with Versace, the Italian design house.