Developers building the Palm Deira yesterday released a new masterplan they say will save money and construction time.
The length of the island off the coast of Dubai will be 12.5 kilometres - a reduction of 3.5 kilometres compared with the original design.
The planned width remains unchanged at 7.5 kilometres.
The revised masterplan sees the dimensions of Palm Deira cut to 12.5 kilometres by 7.5 km.
But the land mass will be six million square metres greater than originally envisaged. And the palm will be the world's biggest man-made island - seven-and-a-half times larger than the Palm Jumeirah and home to a million people.
In March Nakheel, which is also developing the Jumeirah and Jebel Ali palms, announced that the Deira project will be split into two parts - the palm-shaped island and a corniche.
Now, following further studies and talks with potential investors, it has released details of the revised plans.
"The major revisions include increasing the land area and beachfront of the development while shortening the length of the island," said Palm Deira operations officer Abdullah bin Sulayem.
"Moving further away from Dubai's coastline the depth of the Arabian Gulf increases substantially.
"Therefore this amendment makes substantial savings on sand volume and construction time.
"We are creating more beaches - an additional 226 kilometres of coastline - and homes. Dubai needs these things." The Palm Deira is the world's largest reclamation project, with 1.14 billion cubic metres of land being reclaimed. Already a total of 198 million cubic metres of sand have been put in place.
The new blueprint will see the creation of nine different areas. Five islands will form the massive corniche - Deira, Al Mamzar, Central, South and North - which will be linked to a main Palm Trunk, Palm Fronds, Palm Crescent and Palm Crown.
Phase one - Deira Island - will be the entrance to the entire development and will be connected by bridges to the existing Deira district between the mouth of Dubai Creek and Port Hamriya.
Transport links will be integrated with existing road networks and the under-construction Dubai Metro.
Nakheel said reclamation work was still on schedule to be finished by 2013 but did not announce a completion date for the whole project.
The company behind the project, Nakheel, expects Palm Deira, the largest manmade island in the world, to be its jewel in the crown.
By Andrian Murphy
© Emirates Today 2007
