Currently Dubai has been named the Middle Eastern City of the Future by the Financial Times group. The title of “The Middle Eastern City of the Future” indicates global acceptance of Dubai's stature as an emerging world city. It is an acknowledgement of the vision of General Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and UAE Minister of Defence, and of his determination to transform his vision into reality. This acknowledgement shows that Dubai is an excellence city and is in a lot of sectors one of the market leaders. Therefore we identified a need for a “Centre of Excellence” in the “Green sector”.

The “Green Centre of Excellence” will be a place were a federation of companies, organizations, and institutions can create innovations to improve the comfort of living, productivity and sustainability in “green”, urban environments. Activities within the “Centre of Excellence” will include research, product development, knowledge transfer, presentation of the “state” of the market through exhibitions and showrooms and of course the offer to sell all kinds of “green-related” products.

The Product group might be plants, trees, seeds, irrigation systems & materials, garden equipment & buildings, plant care products, fertilizers & pest control products, pools & ponds, floriculture & agriculture materials and all kinds of machineries and tools. Therefore, the ultimate ambition of the “Green Centre of Excellence” is to enhance the comfort of living of the people of Dubai through providing sustainable products and services, to gather expertise in the green sector through conferences and exhibitions, and of course to become in the long-term one of the market leaders in the “Green sector”.

In addition, the “Green Centre of Excellence” will help to earn international recognition for development of knowledge and products through collaborations in research, development and education. Furthermore, it will help to improve and to protect the quality of our local environment; the quality of life in our community and it will help to build towards a more sustainable future through an advanced understanding of our surroundings. It is planned that all the elements of the “Green Centre of Excellence” will be located on the ground floor level and therefore the upper level will be used by the other components. This architectural arrangement will help to make “Desert Rose - The Green City” one big showroom of the-state-of-the-market in the “Green” sector. This architectural arrangement creates a knowledge transfer and continues learning on a daily basis at its best. In addition a conference and exhibition area of up to 5,000 m² will also help to do so.

The first little success story of “Desert Rose – The Green City” has already been written: OBI of the biggest market player in Garden Centre and Home Improvement in Europe, with more than 500 markets in Europe and China an a total turn over with approx. € 7.0 billion (AED 32.0 billion) and has agreed to open their first and biggest market in the Middle East in Dubai with about 55,000 m² of gross area. They stated that they believe that “Desert Rose – The Green City” will be a new successful landmark in Dubai and they want to take part in this project with an additional prospective investment plan to expand in the region at least with 4 further markets.

In accordance with the overall project concept “The Green Centre of Excellence” will also be planned in highly flexible small-sized building structures to make sure that that the project is able to react on future tenant, customer and the market requirements.