XL Tower

An oval office tower completed in 2010, well before the canal arrived

XL Tower has nineteen office floors sitting on a three-level podium, a ground floor and two basement parking levels. DAMAC Properties handed it over in December 2010, at a time when Business Bay was still largely a building site and most of the neighbouring towers had yet to break ground. This is not a residential scheme. It is a freehold commercial building, a rarer category in the developer's catalogue, which built its name mainly on branded apartments. Fifteen years after handover, the building now has an operating track record, observable rents and a surrounding district that has changed completely. For a buyer, that changes how the deal should be read.

Oval floor plate, nineteen levels above the podium

The oval shape of the tower sets it apart from the rectangular blocks that dominate Business Bay. This choice has a direct effect on the floor plates: with no dead corners or deep recesses, daylight reaches further toward the central core. DAMAC opted for large panoramic windows, which light up most of the workstations. The trade off is well known to fit out teams: a curved plan is harder to partition than an orthogonal one and lends itself better to open plan layouts than to rows of closed offices. The three podium levels house shared services, and the ground floor holds retail units and food and beverage outlets.

An oval pool on the roof of an office building

The most unusual detail sits at the top. The tower is capped by an oval pool surrounded by loungers, with a 360 degree view over the Business Bay skyline. In a commercial building, this kind of amenity remains uncommon in Dubai, where rooftop pools are typically reserved for residential and hotel towers. The fitness offering does not stop at the pool: occupiers also get an equipped gym, a separate aerobics studio and shaded jogging tracks around the building. All of this is clearly aimed at companies that want to keep their staff with more than just an address.

Dubai Canal views: a bonus that came later

Current marketing highlights views over the Dubai Water Canal. Yet the canal was only opened in 2016, six years after the tower was completed. Early occupiers were therefore looking out over an unfinished waterway and empty plots. This gap makes a useful point for investors: part of XL Tower's value comes from public infrastructure that did not exist at the time the building was designed. The landscaping of the waterfront, with its promenades and cycling paths, also made the area far more walkable, which matters for the ground floor retail.

Two sets of travel times, depending on the source

The original brochure marketed the project under the name "Burj Area" and promised very short journeys: five minutes to Sheikh Zayed Road and the DIFC, ten minutes to the international airport and the Meydan racecourse, fifteen minutes to the Burj Al Arab. Current estimates are more conservative. They put the Dubai Mall at nine minutes, the Burj Al Arab at nineteen minutes, Palm Jumeirah and DXB airport at twenty minutes, The Walk JBR at twenty four minutes and Al Maktoum International at forty one minutes. The gap reflects how much traffic has built up since 2010. The recent figures are the ones worth working from.

DAMAC before the era of branded towers

At the time the brochure was produced, DAMAC claimed thirty seven completed buildings in Dubai, amounting to 7,817 units and close to 14 million square feet, with sixty five more buildings under construction across the region. The developer had not yet launched the Cavalli or de Grisogono schemes that now take up a large share of its messaging around Business Bay, from Canal Heights to Chic Tower. XL Tower belongs to the previous generation, more functional and less built around brand marketing. For buyers looking for freehold office space rather than an off plan apartment, that delivered and tested profile is precisely what makes it worth a look.