With 14,000 laborers toiling day and night, the first of Dubai’s three palm-shaped islands is finally about to get its first residents.
The Palm Jumeirah, a 12-square-mile island group, is part of what’s billed as the largest land-reclamation project in the world, the product of five years of brute hauling of millions of tons of Persian Gulf sand and quarried rock.
On Nov. 30, the palm will open to some 4,000 residents, said Issam Kazim, a spokesman for Dubai’s state-owned developer Nakheel.
When fully complete by 2010, the Palm Jumeirah will be an offshore city, with some 60,000 residents and at least 50,000 workers in 32 hotels and dozens of shops and attractions, Nakheel said.