Jumeirah Lake Towers: How Dubai’s high-rise hub united community and commerce

Born in north London in 1912, Harold Samuel had originally trained to be a surveyor before becoming an estate agent and eventually acquiring Land Securities Investment Trust in 1944. Often erroneously credited with coining the property tricolon “location, location, location”, his keen eye for identifying opportunity in Britain’s post-war cities helped him to expand from just three modest properties at the start of his career into one of the London Stock Exchange’s largest companies, and while he might not be the first person to emphasise the importance of location, he certainly wasn’t the last.

Unlike the pre-existing cities of Europe that had slowly evolved over centuries, identifying what made a strategic location within emerging economies such as the Middle East and Asia took a lot more calculated risk, and certainly Dubai was no exception. Expanding west from the creek, the Emirate’s growth was less driven around a single, centralised district, but several that were either under construction or earmarked for future development. Even by the time Chuck Berry opened Hard Rock Café on Sheikh Zayed Road in December 1997, at what is now the exit for Media City, areas such as the Marina, JBR and JLT were still deserted and the location was considered by many as an outpost enroute to Abu Dhabi; much less a part of Dubai.

Just five years later, the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre (DMCC) was established with two mandates - to attract, enable and promote trade through the Emirate, and to fulfil its duties as the master developer for the Jumeirah Lake Towers community. In master planning the community, our team had to think carefully about how it would develop the 180-hectare site, and how it would attract the necessary residents and businesses to populate a plan that included 87 towers, while incorporating the six design principles of connected communities, transport and mobility, assets and landmarks, smart and connected compact city, sustainability and pedestrian oriented.  

Separated into 26 clusters, with almost all containing three towers each, construction began shortly after incorporation with the Saba Tower, becoming the first to be completed in December 2006. From the earliest stages it was clear to both DMCC and our national leadership that anchoring the community in something beyond property would be critical for its long-term success.

In 2005, a consortium of Standard, Deutsche, and Dubai Islamic bank helped to launch a ground-breaking gold Sukuk, which raised $200 million, the proceeds of which were used to finance the construction of the community’s first commercial towers, namely Gold, Silver and Almas. In spite of the towers being completed in 2008 amidst a global recession, DMCC had ensured its community was now equipped with the necessary infrastructure to host companies and exchanges, forging a foundation of what was to come, including a state-of-the-art vault designed in coordination with Brinks insured to hold more than $1 billion in assets. It is worth mentioning that by raising funds for its own development, DMCC remains unique amongst its peers as an autonomous entity that pulled itself up by its own boot straps in order to meet its own uncompromising vision; one of the many reasons it became Dubai’s first government entity to receive a fully interactive rating from Standard & Poor, second only ADIA in the UAE.

With the DGCX and Dubai Diamond Exchange now firmly established as major exchanges, DMCC’s role as master developer pivoted from underlying infrastructure and towards making JLT a community in the truest sense of the word. In support of better accessibility and area recognition, the DMCC Metro Station was formally opened on 01st September 2018, enabling fast, reliable, and affordable transport for both commuters and visitors, while simultaneously providing pedestrian access to Dubai Marina, JBR and ultimately the beach. 

By listening to the feedback of the community, DMCC made the decision to change the purpose of one of its lakes to become a central park, creating a large green space of 55,000 square metres, as well as the JLT dog park, one of the few dedicated places in the city that caters to man’s best friend.

In our support of promoting a healthier lifestyle, DMCC also introduced several outdoor, free-to-use facilities including the JLT Court Basketball Court, which was inaugurated by and named after the late legend, Kobe Bryant, while simultaneously encouraging the establishment of fitness and beauty boutiques across the clusters, of which today there are 324. In the spirit of encouraging entrepreneurs to take a greater interest in health and sports, the establishment of SK Sports Holding DMCC, a venture founded by footballing ace Clarence Seedorf and MMA champion Khabib Nurmagmomedov, will soon support youth training in both disciplines from their forthcoming academy.

In a similar story, JLT’s F&B diversity has also been a crucial focal point for residents and commuters who’ve seen their choices expand from a handful of cafés to some of Dubai’s most sought after eateries ranging from noodle bars to bistros, to partnership projects with Dubai-based entrepreneur, Tom Arnell of Bull & Roo. Altogether, JLT is now home to more than 460 cafes, restaurants, and hotels, ranging from well-known chains such as Pizza Express, to home-cooked family restaurants like Bait Maryam, resulting in a cuisine for every palate within its highly multicultural community.

This attention towards community living didn’t dampen DMCC’s appetite for business or its zeal to continue to support its member companies thrive. In 2015, it opened its dedicated, grade A office tower, One JLT, a 26,000 square metre space designed to LEED Gold certifications that galvanised the spirit of sustainability and innovative technologies into a single, centrally located project. With almost every conceivable product or service now available within less than two square kilometres it was no surprise that in 2017, JLT secured the People’s Choice Family Friendly Location of the Year Award, as well as an Infrastructure & Real Estate Excellence Award.

Aside from advanced infrastructure, DMCC was also keeping its eye on disrupting existing supply chains by offering greater value, two great examples being tea and coffee. As a nation which produces neither commodity, DMCC needed to create the right environment in order to attract both sectors to utilise Dubai as a destination for packing, roasting, storing and/or reexporting, while remaining cost competitive. In developing and launching both the DMCC Tea Centre in 2005 and DMCC Coffee Centre in 2018, Dubai emerged from obscurity to become the world’s largest re-exporter of tea while becoming responsible for the equivalent of more than 25 million cups of coffee since trade began.

Other nascent industries to have launched within the community include the Middle East’s first Google for Entrepreneurs Global Tech Hub with AstroLabs Dubai, which featured an advanced mobile device development lab co-designed with Google for Entrepreneurs, while DMCC’s 2021 launch of its Crypto Centre has successfully registered over 400 companies with interest from almost a thousand more.

As a diversified location, which consistently demonstrated a willingness to integrate new technology, DMCC signed an agreement with Etisalat Digital in October 2019 to make JLT the smartest district in the region to live and work. As a consequence, the community was equipped with world class smart platforms that leveraged the power of IoT, while also becoming the first district in the region to utilise 5G technology. In addition to its existing partnership with Careem Bike and the RTA’s Scooter initiative, as well as its 6.3MW solar parking shade project, which is in the process of being rolled out across 17 locations saving 7,612 MWh annually, JLT had truly reached a point of capacity, which is what made its next announcement particularly interesting.

Unveiled in 2015, Uptown Dubai District broke ground in 2017, with a separate ground-breaking taking place to mark the construction of Uptown Tower in 2019, the first of the super tall mixed-use towers in the Uptown District. Billed as the first five-star hospitality product and first branded residential product created in collaboration with Accor, ASGG, WATG and BESIX, Uptown is the culmination of all the lessons learned from JLT with the added luxury of contemporary technology. Built to a LEED Gold Certification, Uptown Tower has integrated sustainability to a new level, for example by setting a new world record for the largest solar plant on a construction site in the world, thereby reducing the project’s carbon footprint by over 50 percent and its operational costs down by 20 percent. Supported by Enerwhere, a DMCC company, Uptown Tower is also being supplied with environmentally friendly district cooling services, courtesy of Emirates Central Cooling Systems Corporation (Empower).

With such significant developments occurring in and around JLT, it was no small wonder that those who’d decided to invest were sitting pretty.  In fact,  Sotheby’s Luxhabitat in February 2020 recognized JLT as the number one luxury residential community with the highest rental returns in Dubai at 7.26%.

While it might have been difficult to argue a case for JLT’s location during the master planning phase, today it covers three kilometres of Sheikh Zayed Road, Dubai’s main artery from east to west, and is connected to two highway exchanges, two metro stations and thirteen bus stops. It is also within five minutes from the beach, ten minutes from the Ibn Battuta Mall and Palm Jumeirah, and just twenty minutes from Expo 2020, Dubai Parks, Dubai Mall, Dubai Opera, DXB Airport and an hour from Abu Dhabi.

As a consequence of all these efforts, DMCC has secured the Global Free Zone of the Year by Financial Times’ fDi Magazine for seven consecutive years, while positioning itself as a world leader in the trade of rough diamonds, a major hub for physical gold, in part thanks to its resident refineries, and the first Free Zone in the UAE to join the UN Global Compact. As an additional benefit, its built environment, and mantra of ‘Made for Trade’ has helped it to attract a who’s who of Global and Fortune 500 companies including PepsiCo, Glencore, Total, America Express, Petronas, Tata, Honeywell, Danone, Colgate Palmolive General Mills and Caterpillar to name a few.

Certainly, by fostering a dynamic, entrepreneurial spirit, accompanied by a pro-business environment with world class modern infrastructure, DMCC has not only continued to grow, but at record levels with the first half of 2022 yielding a record-breaking period of registration with 1,469 new companies, pushing the total to over 21,000 registered businesses.

While I cannot dispute the value of location when it comes to property, I am certain that JLT’s success as a community is thanks to an unwavering focus on its long-term vision and to the people who’ve chosen to become a part of it. Much more than location, it is truly a cosmopolitan community that continues to develop in line with the demands and requirements of its residents and commuters, while remaining true to its mandate of attracting, enabling, and promoting trade. Today, that trade is valued at more than half a trillion dollars per year – a figure even Harold Samuel would have to agree, is a solid return on investment.