Dubai's $20bn Jumeirah Central to have 1.5km tunnel

Jumeirah Central, the $20 billion (AED73.4 billion) urban mixed-use city district planned for Dubai, will have a 1.5-kilometre underground tunnel, a top Dubai Holding executive told Arabain Business.

“We will have a 1.5 kilometre tunnel underneath the more dense part of our project and it will connect he three utilities complexes, but also work as a service tunnel,” said Morgan Parker, Chief Operating Officer, Jumeirah Central.

The tunnel will allow commercial deliveries to be routed to highest density users such as retail malls and hotels.

“It will reduce air and noise pollution, and save on the wear and tear of the public roads due to the truck deliveries.”

The tunnel will aid in better waste management within the project, which will house up to 35,000 residents, and will be the first


class="GINGER_SOFTWARE_mark">development to convert organic waste into biogas.

“All the organic waste from retail malls and larger hotels will be sorted in the vacuum system and collected. We will do our own composting and capture the bio gas feeding it back into the kitchens of retail shops and hotels.”

Parker revealed plans were in place to generate 10 percent of the total power of the mega city using renewables.

“Ten percent of the total power will be generated onsite, primarily through solar collection. We could also do some wind collection on higher buildings.”

Eleven of the 21 car parking stations, each of which will cover 3,000 square metres, will have solar panels, while the remaining 10 will offer urban planning facilities or have green roofs.

The entire project will have three 108 MW Dewa power substations and three 50,000 tons of refrigeration capacity district cooling plants.

Jumeirah Central is coming up on the site previously allocated for the Mall of the World, off Sheikh Zayed Road. It will comprise 9 million square feet of retail space including three malls, 4.5 million square feet of outdoor shopping space, 2,800 hotel rooms, 3,000 apartments and more than 44,000 car parking spaces.