DUBAI-BASED MAG Group has signed an agreement to develop an approximately one-million-sq-ft mixed-use project in Dubai Healthcare City at an estimated cost of around Dh800 million ($217.8 million).

The joint venture agreement was signed with Dubai Healthcare City (DHCC), the promoter of the healthcare project in Dubai.

The development, which is still at the concept design stage, is expected to include two hospitals covering a total of 260,000 sq ft, plus an 80,000-sq-ft clinic; a residential complex of four buildings with a combined gross floor area of 430,000 sq ft, a hotel apartment with a gross floor area of 80,000 sq ft, and 100,000 sq ft of retail space.

It will also include a mosque and one of the most advanced automated car-parks and extensive hard and soft landscaping.

It is envisaged that the whole project will be completed by the end of 2016.

Addressing officials from DHCC, Moafaq Al Gaddah, chairman of MAG Group, said: “The healthcare sector in Dubai is on the cusp of a sustained period of growth and will need to build medical facilities for the future.

“This expansion is being fuelled by numerous factors – firstly, the natural growth in the local population and in the number of expatriate arrivals as the economy expands, looking ahead to Expo 2020, and secondly, the growth of private health insurance due to changes in government employment policy and Dubai’s growing status as a medical tourism hub for the Middle East,” he added.