Roshn to build its first residential district in Mecca

The Saudi giga-project Roshn is building its first residential community in Mecca, which will cater to middle income Saudis. 

The Almanar project will sit on the western outskirts of the city, with easy access to Jeddah airport. It will house 17,000 people in its first phase, Roshn said this week. 

The development will include three to five-bedroom townhouses, duplexes and villas. 

Roshn is one of the Public Investment Fund-owned giga-projects, with a mandate to push ownership among Saudi nationals up to 70 percent by 2030. Home ownership was put at 61 percent by the end of 2022 in the last official census. 

The design will also draw inspiration from local Hijazi architecture, to fit the guidelines set out by the ministry of culture’s Architecture and Design Commission.

“The existing natural landscape will be preserved and prioritised, with wadis winding through Almanar’s neighbourhoods … supporting the conservation of indigenous flora and fauna within these green corridors,” Roshn said. 

Almanar is Roshn’s sixth project, after Marafy and Alarous in Jeddah, Sedra and Warefa in Riyadh, and Alfulwa in Hofuf. 

While Roshn projects are aimed at Saudi nationals, wealthy Muslims around the world are likely to take advantage of new golden residency visas in Saudi Arabia to buy nearly $2 billion of property in Mecca, Medina and Riyadh, a recent survey found.

In the survey, most of the 506 high net worth individuals, defined in the survey as people “with a personal net worth of over $500,000 excluding the value of their main home”, said they were considering buying in Mecca and Medina within the next five years.

Construction has boomed in Mecca over the past decade. However, there have been mostly luxury properties near the Grand Mosque, built by the developer Jabal Omar. The luxury high rises overlooking the mosque have drawn criticism from some Muslims.