It is running on the Dubai market – and it cannot be otherwise by calling itself the “Niki Lauda” Tower – the Preatoni Group’s latest business venture. The challenge is to complete a 26-story skyscraper sold on paper for 39 percent and in fact never built. The building is named after the famous former Formula 1 driver.
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The project and the constraints
These days, in fact, the Arab Emirate’s Special Judicial Committee – which handles the completion of distressed assets (i.e., buildings stranded in bankruptcy, executive and insolvency proceedings) – has sanctioned Preatoni Real Estate Development’s takeover of the previous developer, Define Properties (LLC), in all obligations and timelines necessary to close the work.
“Basically,” Preatoni explained, “it involves completely building a 26-story skyscraper with a total gross floor area of almost 50 thousand square meters. An overall investment between 30 and 40 million euros to be completed 100 percent – including the certifications of the competent bodies – within 36 months.” That is, between February and March 2026.
The Niki Laura Tower project has been entrusted to Killa Design. This is one of the most dynamic architectural firms in the area, founded by Shaun Killa in 2015. The project will probably be completed between September and October. At that point, construction should definetely pick up speed.
Dubai at the top for prices
After all, as also revealed in Knight Frank’s latest “The Wealth Report 2023” (the analysis published annually by the independent real estate consultancy) Dubai continues to attract the super-rich.
Prime housing prices in the Emirati city, in fact, accelerated by 44.2 percent in 2022. The city remains, thus, at the top of the Prime International Residential Index. Which monitors high-end property prices in 100 markets.
Read also: Investing in Dubai and the UAE: fast-growing opportunities and emerging sectors
Preatoni Tower’s experience
For Preatoni, this is not the first experience of rehabilitating a decommissioned property in the Gulf country.
In the spring of 2018, the Group had announced that it had completed work on the tower that now bears its name consisting of 554 real estate units divided into 45 floors, 190 meters high. And with offices up to the 25th floor 25 and residences up to the 45th floor.
In 2006, in fact, the German-owned Alternative Capital Invest (Aci) had launched the project to build the tower called Dubai Star. Thus raising deposit shares from investors from India, Pakistan and other Asian countries.
With the crisis the developer abandoned the project, which was 35 percent complete, and investors.
Only in 2012, a meeting between Preatoni and one of the owners of the apartments, who had created a committee of investors to try to come to terms with the matter, had prompted the Group to take over the initiativ. Which could now become a more structural line of business.
Read also: Dubai as a center of innovation: from blockchain to AI, a city projected into the future
