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Qatar is working on a “unique” project – a township that will create an interface between Doha city and the new Hamad International Airport and enhance commercial and business activities in the country.
The project, called Airport City, will come up on a 10sq km area and is targeted to be completed over a 30-year period.
The masterplan has been conceived as a series of four “circular districts”, connected by what is called a “Green Spine”, running parallel to Hamad International Airport’s second runway.
The four zones will be Business District, Aviation Campus, Logistics District and Residential District.
In the first 10 years of the 30-year masterplan (expected to be completed by 2022), substantial parts of the Business District and all of the Aviation Campus will be developed.
The Aviation Campus will be traversed by a long podium, a symbolic entrance to the Airport City and the location of the headquarters for Qatar Airways and the Civil Aviation Authority.
The Airport City concept is “targeted at optimised development of the transport hub of an airport and its surrounding airside and landside supporting functions,” Hamad International Airport said yesterday.
The project, a clustered development, will have many green spaces that will interlink and together branch out to one large park across the full span of the site. The branches may take the form of walkways and promenades, wide boulevards, public parking and other outdoor amenities.
The Business District will be centred on a Terminal Complex that will contain a second terminal for the airport and a train station for Doha with metro and long distance rails. The terminal’s plaza, connecting air and ground transport, will be an intersection of the international and local traffic.
“The project demonstrates Qatar’s tremendous potential and its unique approach to development, while also providing the flexibility required to support its inevitable future growth,” HIA said.
Qatar already plans to have a second terminal at the new Hamad International Airport in time for the FIFA World Cup and dedicate the first terminal to the use of national carrier Qatar Airways.
“It is part of our long-term vision. As we are hosting the FIFA World Cup in 2022, one of the commitments is to have another terminal. Once that’s ready we will move other airlines to the second terminal and dedicate the first one to Qatar Airways,” the Civil Aviation Authority chairman and managing director, HE Abdul Aziz al-Noaimi, told Gulf Times recently.
