Lootah inspects progress of Naif Souq construction work

New Souq to open soon

Lootah inspects progress of Naif Souq construction work

Eng. Hussain Nasser Lootah, Director General of Dubai Municipality recently inspected the progress of the construction work of the new Naif Souq, which is nearing completion.

He was accompanied during the visit by Eng. Abdullah Raffia, Assistant Director General for General Support Services Sector, Eng. Mohamed Mashroom, Director of General Projects Department, Khalifa Hareb, Director of Assets Management Department, and Khalid Mohammed Badri, Director of Corporate Marketing and Relations Department and the engineers who oversee the project.

Lootah, who stressed on the need to complete the project within the schedule, praised the efforts exerted by the team from the Municipality and the consultant and the contractor to complete the work within the specified time period by working with morning and evening shifts.

He directed members of the Municipality team to expedite the process of the trial operation of the devices and equipment in preparation for the opening of the market to the public as soon as possible.

The Assets Management Department of the Municipality had recently started the process of allocating shops in the Souq, which was gutted in an inferno in April 2008. The Municipality had built a temporary Souq 500 metre away from the original Souq in July 2008, which was completed within a record time of 45 days ahead of the scheduled time of 60 days.

The new Souq, which is getting ready for delivery, houses more shops than the old one. While the gutted Souq had only 200 shops, the newly constructed Souq, which is a central AC building, has 218 shops, 111 on the ground floor and 107 on the first floor.

The new Souq is equipped with all modern amenities such as toilets, parking, coffee shops and Municipality offices. The basement parking can accommodate 99 vehicles. The building houses three coffee shops on the ground floor, two offices on the first floor and one each on the ground floor and basement. The Souq, which has four entrances, also houses 44 kiosks, two elevators and two lifts.

It is worth mention that the Municipality had distributed compensation to the shop owners of the old Naif Souq. The shop owners were exempted from paying any additional rents until the new Naif Souq was ready. The Municipality had also launched a special advertising campaign about the Souq in different media in the Gulf countries in order to continue to get visitors of the old Souq who are spread all over the Gulf countries.

Naif Souq was one of the oldest traditional markets in Dubai, having been named so thanks to its proximity to the ancient Naif Fort. The 60,000 sq ft market was also popularly referred to in Arabic as "Souq Sanadiq" because of the box-type shops before they were renovated in the 80s