Durrat Al Bahrain
Phase One of the Durrat Al Bahrain Project commenced in October 2004 with the start of land reclamation, followed soon after with start of Phase Two. The Durrat Al Bahrain project is jointly owned by the Government of Bahrain and Kuwait Finance House, an Islamic bank based on the Islamic Shari’a. The project designed by the world-renowned firm of Atkins. This project follows lines similar to those of Dubai’s Palm Islands, in that it is a series of artificial islands being constructed at a cost of US$1.2 billion. It has been designed to cover 215 million square feet and consist of a total of 13 islands and is just over 33 miles from Bahrain International Airport. These 13 islands will be in the shape of fish and crescents, with six being coral atolls in the lagoon.
An 18-hole golf club will be allocated to some 53 to 65,000 square feet of the 215 million square feet already allocated to the project, together with a number of five-star hotels with spa facilities, plus 2,000 beach front villas and parks. Among the many amenities will be 3600 executive apartments, together with offices mosques, centres of entertainment and many shopping malls and restaurants. Linking all the various islands together will be built 12 bridges. An exhibition and conference centre is also planned for the use of the business community and a full range of infrastructure from fire stations to health care facilities are also planned. For the children there will be a soft play area, an aqua park, a children’s nursery, family restaurants and other leisure facilities suitable for all the family.
As this development on the south coast of Bahrain progresses, a leading supermarket chain, the Jawad Group, has now been signed up by Durrat Resort Management to provide grocery convenience stores on the resort islands which are expected to accommodate in the region of 60,000 inhabitants and over 4,000 visitors daily. Another project being planned for the Durrat Al Bahrain resort is a 700,000m2, 400-berth marina to be built across three of the islands which has recently been awarded the CNBC Award for best marina project in the area. A new highway is being designed to link this project at Durrat Al Bahrain with Bahrain’s capital, Manama.
The new CEO recently appointed to the management of Durrat Al Bahrain Marina is Waleed Saffy who was previously the General Manager of Al-Areen Holding Company which was responsible for developing the Al-Areen Desert Spa and Resort projects such as the Banyan Tree Desert Spa and Resort at Al-Areen and the Lost Paradise at Dilmum. This architects’ dream appears to be the design for pure utopia where the vision describes divergent lifestyles all complementing each other. While the advertising describes Durrat Al Bahrain as a place of escapism, nothing could be closer to the truth. Where other countries build tower blocks or houses, the Middle East take over from Mother Nature and build islands amongst a coral sea. When advertising described Durrat Al Bahrain as “a place like no other”, it never spoke a truer word.