New residential, investment destination beckons as Imperial City gains traction

Gradually but steadily, Imperial International Business City (IIBC) is gaining traction as a new residential and investment destination that holds compelling opportunities for savvy and patient investors with long term view of the property market.

After a couple of years of patient and painstaking planning and preliminary ground work, the promoters of this ambitious project have announced that by the second quarter of this year, precisely in April, the project would tee off with land reclamation that would give way, in the next two years, to infrastructure development.

The promoters do not envisage any impediments to the progress of work on the city as it is to be built as a fresh city.

“It is difficult when you have a land or city that is already existing and you have to change the infrastructure and everything in the city to be able to meet the new reality”, explained Femi Akioye, managing director of Channeldrill Resources Limited, developers of the city.

The advantage which the city has, which is a plus for prospective residents and investors, is that it is being built from the scratch and Akioye assured that “since we are building the city from the scratch, we have the advantage of building for the future. We have anticipated what is going to happen in the future and are building towards that. We have to build something that will be relevant in 40 to 50 years’’

Imperial City, which will be sitting on 200 hectares of land to be reclaimed from the Lagoon from the end of Freedom Road to the end of NICON Town, is part of the new urbanism in Lagos which is giving rise to new urban communities aimed to absorb the upcoming middle class population in the state.

The city can be accessed from Freedom Road, Lekki Phase 1; Kunsenla Road by 4th Roundabout on Lekki Epe Expressway through Oba Saheed Ademola Elegushi Road by Spa Supermarket before Jakande Estate. It is a new fully planned city with distinct zones and building regulations where each zone will have low, medium and high density areas with water view.

At a press briefing in Lagos recently to announce milestones on the city, Akioye assured that contrary to the popular view that reclaimed developments in Lagos are prone to flooding, “we have looked at that problem and we are actually dredging 2 metres to 2.5metres above sea level. We have entrusted the job to one of the best dredging companies in the world. So, we are not going to have flooding problem”.

‘’When you know what you want to do, you have to look for people that can do it. What we have decided to do is to look for world class organizations that have done this before over and over again. Everybody involved in this project is in top 20 global rating”, he assured further.

In line with this assurance, notable construction partners including Royal Harkoning DHV, Dredging International Services Nigeria Limited, Kedari Capital Limited, etc have been assembled for this project.

‘‘This wonderful Imperial City project could be a world class reclamation design. What is important is for the developers to use high quality sand for the dredging and they need to go for quality materials because of the basis.

The flood resilient platform should also be put into consideration’’, Ronald Stive, director, maritime projects at Royal Harkoning DHV and reclamation consultant for Imperial City, advised.

The city promises top of the range infrastructure including first smart shopping mall in Africa, first 6-star hotel in Africa, world class hospital and recovery resort within dedicated healthcare zone, private data centre, cloud-enabled 24 hour spy eyed security connected to a central security center, smart emergency response, intelligent transportation, etc.

Others are cooking gas piped to every house, roads with walk and bicycle way, lakes or waterways within the city, underground drainage, sewage treatment , water treatment plants, fibre optic cable, communication network and smart city infrastructure for smart.

‘‘We believe that this is a very nice project because it is well located on the lagoon. We have done many of this kind of project not only in Nigeria but in other parts of the world.
These are the kind of projects we are involved in”, said Stefaan Van Velthoven, Dredging International’s General Manager.