Blue City, Oman

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The Blue City is a $15 billion megacity project started by the Oman. The Blue City project will take up roughly 34 square kilometers along the coastal region at Al Sawaadi, only 45 minutes from Muscat. When completed, the city will include 16 hotels, two hospitals, a large university.. Also, there will be an aquarium, a convention center and a sports village which will be hosting a lot of European and international football teams for the pre-season. The chairman of the Blue City, Anees Issa, plans to announce in 2006 with the association of one of the top football club in Europe and one of the celebrity players. Only the 500,000 resident Dubai Waterfront project is bigger.

[edit] Creating Jobs

Blue City will also be creating thousands of jobs. The first phase alone is expected to create 7,000 direct jobs and 25,000 indirect jobs.

"This is why we came into creating this urban economy, to create jobs. We thought about things that the country needs, so we went into hotels, shopping, entertainment, amusement parks, theatres and bowling. Furthermore, we will have one of the top universities from the United States, not an affiliation, but a real university," Mr. Issa was quoted in the December 15, 2005 edition of Our World, a USA Today insert.

The Blue City chairman is also negotiating with two international hospitals for cancer and heart treatment. "Again this will attract people from the Middle East or Africa to come and be treated here and that will create jobs for nurses, for hotels and indirect things. This is how we create the economy and this why the government liked the idea. The Blue City is a tourist project that we converted into a macro-economy."

[edit] International Involvement

The project will be financed by the U.S. financial group Oppenheimer. "There is more money available here for investment but we did not want to bring in money from the Gulf region. We wanted to be different, so we looked at European and American collaboration and that is good for the country in general. It is good for rating when investors come in from the United States, Britain, or Germany. Our project has helped the rating of the government because of the way we dealt with this." says Mr. Issa.

[edit] External links

• www.almadinaalzarqa.com - The Blue City - Sultanate of Oman