Feature Stories
Dubai West
By Deborah Campbell published May 1, 2008
Almost overnight, the tiny Middle Eastern kingdom of Dubai has transformed from a modest trading port into a glittering Shangri-la—complete with indoor ski hill. Situated at the crossroads of the emerging giant economies—China, India, Russia, the Persian Gulf petro-powers—the city-state draws tourists and foreign investors to its audacious mega-projects, from the world’s largest manmade island to the largest mall. In many ways it has played the role of the saloon in the gold rush: the prospectors might strike it rich or go bust, but everyone needs a place to kick back, part with their (occasionally ill-gotten) gains, and broker the deals of tomorrow. As global wealth shifts from West to East, that place is Dubai: a desert kingdom built on real estate.
Symbolic of Dubai’s global ambitions is the Burj Dubai, the world’s tallest skyscraper, which is being constructed by the real-estate developer Emaar Properties. One-third owned by Dubai’s ruling family, Emaar has enjoyed a rise as meteoric as the Burj’s, becoming one of the world’s top five real-estate developers, with a global property portfolio worth $100 billion. A number of Vancouverites, most of whom emerged from Concord Pacific—including Robert Lee, Blair Hagkull, and Stanley Kwok—are among the senior managers and consultants who helped Emaar build Dubai and market its model to the developing world. The most noteworthy of these locals to emerge from the company that developed the former Expo lands is Robert Booth, Emaar’s slim and fashionably spectacled executive director of global development, who recently returned to Vancouver to open Emaar’s first North American branch.
A Friday morning finds Booth (rather uncharacteristically for someone who travels more than most rock stars) at Emaar Canada’s new office on West Hastings. Born in Montreal and raised in Vancouver, Booth completed his BA in political science and urban studies at SFU and an MA in property development and planning at UBC. Now 40, he divides his time among Vancouver, Dubai, London (where Emaar recently acquired U.K. realtor Hamptons International), L.A. (where Emaar acquired John Laing Homes, the second-largest home builder in the United States), New York (one of 10 locations, including the Burj, where Emaar will build Giorgio Armani hotels), and more exotic locales such as Beirut and Marrakech (where Emaar is building a luxury residential golf complex). “Last year,” he says, “I spent about 600 hours on a plane.”
