Channeldrill Resources assures of flood-free lifetime for Imperial City residents

Channeldrill Resources Limited, developer of Imperial International Business City (IIBC), has assured prospective residents of the emerging city being built on expansive land reclaimed from the Lagos Lagoon of flood-free lifetime of 100 years.This assurance, the company explains, is anchored on the city’s ambitious infrastructure masterplan that will make set it out as the first self-sustaining eco-friendly smart business city to be built in Africa.

A joint venture project between the Elegushi Royal Family of Ekateland and Channeldrill Resources, Imperial City is part of the new urbanism in Lagos that will be delivering new urban communities to absorb the growing middle class in the mega city. It will be sitting on estimated 200 hectares of land.

As a city touted as the future of Lagos that will offer space for live, work and play, IIBC is also a well designed response to the challenges and opportunities in Lagos whose fundamentals are as intriguing as they are compelling to savvy and astute investors.

Lagos has a large and growing population projected to hit 400 million by 2050. Its present population creates a housing constraint and, at the same time, an opportunity for further housing development and investment. At the moment, Lagos harbours 45 percent of Nigeria’s skilled labour;  60 percent of its residents live in informal settlements; the city has  3.2 percent annual growth rate; 24 percent of Nigeria’s urban population lives in Lagos and the city has about three million housing units deficit.

“Imperial City is, therefore, coming to address the housing constraints in Lagos. What we are developing is an island that will attract the best companies from Nigeria and across the globe. It is a place where work, home and play are walking distances from one another and it is set in a tropical landscape that is safe, relaxing and a pleasure to live in. It is an island that will be utility self-sufficient, ensuring that its luxury homes will always have water, power and sanitation”, assured Femi Akioye, Channeldrill Resources’ CEO, in an interview in Lagos.

To complement the quality of the development, Akioye disclosed that they have engaged Mott MacDonald Limited of London, the best in class infrastructure development firm, as consultants to the city. “The infrastructure design of the city would ensure that it is self-sustaining, must be smart, eco-friendly and must have steady traffic flow”, assured Stuart Croucher, head of the Mott MacDonald team, which was on four-day visit and inspection of Ikate Elegushi Lagos, the city’s project site.

Croucher assured further that the city would have general utility efficiency and would be leveraging the best technology to archive these design, adding that the developers had charged them to make sure the city was a zero-flood zone for the next 100 years.

“To be able to achieve this task, we are working with Royal Haskoning DHV Nederland B.V. who are the reclamation/marine and marina consultants. They have done an extensive research on the lagoon and the future rise in water level of the whole lagoon and the report is what they are now working with to make sure that the zero-flood zones is archived.  Because of the future rise in the water level, IIBC will be reclaimed at 3.5m above sea level”, he said.

 

CHUKA UROKO