Al-Akaria Saudi Real Estate Company (SRECO), a real estate developer listed on the Saudi stock exchange (Tadawul), has announced plans for a 7 million square meter mixed-use development called “Al-Widyan,” in a strategic location of Riyadh.
The announcement is part of a new business direction for SRECO — a Saudi developer with 40 years’ experience, partially owned by the Public Investment Fund (PIF). SRECO’s renewed business plan embarks on a journey to deliver a new generation of large scale, mixed-use real estate developments across the country where Saudis can enjoy the social and economic transformation brought by Vision 2030.
Al-Widyan is the first private real estate project to be granted the status of a self-regulatory organization (SRO), which de-risks the project for investors, reduces complexity in the development phase and fast tracks permit services. Co-developers and sub-developers will be able to enjoy significantly shorter go-to-market timelines, making the project an attractive investment opportunity with fast and efficient procedures that will cut through bureaucracy and remove the need to engage with central government authorities.
SRECO has also registered a company to execute the project — Al-Widyan Co. — which is 100 percent owned by SRECO.
“Al-Widyan will be a new paradigm for community living in the Kingdom and will embody the spirit of new Saudi Arabia, the power of human talent to conceptualize and develop the future that we aspire to for our children, communities and nation,” said Abdulrahman Almofadhi, chairman of the board of directors of SRECO.
“With Al-Widyan, we are taking a new approach to real estate development. We have focused on putting people’s wellness at the center of the conception, design and creation of this project. Al-Widyan is the proof of concept of the future of building, living in healthy and innovative environment, where it’s design is aligned with the world wellness lifestyle real estate principles,” he added.
“We are building legitimate proof of concept, locating key partners and investors and beginning construction. In line with this approach, our operations and projects are increasingly independent of public sector funding, and open to investors from all over the world. We look forward to revealing more details to the public in October.”
