27 April 2005
DUBAI: When this city's furnace-like summer gets too hot to bear, folks will cool off at a local resort with tumbling snowflakes, skiing and snowboarding on five trails, and, for those who need a break from the cold, mugs of hot chocolate by the fireplace.
The resort, a faux mountainside playground dubbed Ski Dubai, is currently a cacophony of blazing jackhammers, forests of steel scaffolding and an emerging gray mountain of concrete slabs.
Come September, a thick insulated roof with a sky-blue ceiling will seal in the site with its 62-meter vertical drop and trails as long as 400 meters.
Crank up the 23 massive air conditioners and turn on the snowmaking jets and organizers say the concrete mountain will be covered in 70 centimeters of powdery snow.
For those bundling up in parkas and strapping on their boots and gloves, the desert outside will melt away.
"There will be no windows looking to the outside," said Phil Taylor, Ski Dubai's chief executive, bounding up the concrete slopes and catwalks during a brisk tour of the construction. "The idea is to create a beautiful day in the mountains." For now, it requires imagination to envision.
"This is the black run here," Taylor says, pointing to a terraced slope of concrete where a welder's sparks tumble.
"This is the ski patrol hut. There will be a quarter-pipe on that wall." When complete, company officials say Ski Dubai will be the third-largest of the world's almost four dozen indoor ski resorts, and the only one in the desert or the Middle East.
The two bigger indoor ski areas have opened in Holland and Germany.
Ski Dubai will comprise about a fifth of the floor plan of the giant $1 billion Emirates Mall, which developers say will briefly be the world's third-largest and Dubai's largest. Other larger malls are already in the works in this mushrooming city that will soon eclipse it.
On a typical day, Taylor says he expects 3,500 visitors paying 150 U.A.E. dirhams ($40) for a two-hour stint on the mountain, with 5,000 arriving on busy days. But the concept is a leap of faith. Almost no one here can ski. Taylor estimates skiers make up as little as 5 percent of his target market. Few Emiratis have seen snow or experienced cold weather. Fewer still own skis or parkas.
Ski Dubai will rent coats, gloves and hats along with boots and skis.
"We've got to create the future skiers of Dubai," Ski Dubai's chief executive said.
It remains to be seen how a ski dome will fare in the United Arab Emirates, one of the globe's hottest countries.
In Tokyo, an even larger snow dome was demolished after it failed to attract enough skiers.
Taylor, who oversaw the construction of London's popular Eye, a giant Ferris wheel, said he's modeling Ski Dubai on a successful snow dome in Madrid, also based at a giant shopping mall.
He's designed aspects of Ski Dubai to gently coax cold-averse Emiratis into the love of skiing and cold weather sports.
Engineers will keep the indoor temperature at a relatively balmy -1 Celsius, far warmer than a blustery mountaintop in winter.
For those who want to start slowly, there are places to sled, toss snowballs or lurk in glacial caverns with ice sculptures and icicle stalactites.
For the rest, there are gentle slopes and a ski school that aspires to have half of its instructors speaking Arabic. Ski Dubai recruiters are already trying to poach coaches from ski resorts in Lebanon and Morocco, Taylor said.
In another aspect borrowed from the Madrid dome, Ski Dubai is being designed to simulate an Alpine resort, rather than the warehouse look of typical indoor ski areas.
There are Disney-esque frozen waterfalls, rope bridges and rocky outcrops, along with an "outdoor" observation deck and cafe near the summit, where hot-chocolate drinkers can relax at tables with a view over the "valley." To generate interest, the attached mall will place cafes at the base of the hill, with a two-story window separating patrons from the skiing. Also looking onto the lower end of the faux mountain will be the lobby and two floors of rooms at the forthcoming Kempinski Hotel.
The ceiling-mounted nozzles won't be the only snow-generating apparatus. Snowmaking rooms will be placed on top of the mall, with workers flicking them out to float onto a play area in front of the mall windows.
Ski Dubai has another goal: to lure shoppers to the Emirates Mall, which, though vast and glitzy, is just one shopping haven in a city where malls are part of the national culture. - AP
SKI DUBAI: Located in the Emirates Mall, at Interchange 4 on Sheikh Zayed Road (the city's main highway), United Arab Emirates; www.skidubai.ae or (971) 4-340-3392. Indoor year-round ski resort scheduled to open September 2005. Rentals and lessons available; admission will be 150 U.A.E. dirhams ($40), which includes a two-hour lift pass, rented skis and warm clothing.
