Dubai's 711m Dubai One tower was scrapped; Meydan One's $6.8bn plan slipped for years

In August 2015, Meydan Group launched Meydan One in Dubai as a record-breaking megaproject: a 711-metre 'Dubai One' tower billed as the world's tallest residential building, a huge mall, a 1.2km indoor ski slope, a 420m fountain, a marina and a canal, spread over 5 million sq m for 78,300 residents. Meydan chairman Saeed Al Tayer said the first phase — tower, mall, civic plaza and canal — would be completed before 2020.

Meydan's vice-president told Emirates 24/7 in September 2015 that the project would cost Dh25-30bn ($6.8-8.2bn), with the first phase timed for completion ahead of Expo 2020, while adding that full build-out would take seven to ten years. In December 2016 Meydan raised Dh1bn in Islamic financing and tendered the 711m tower, still promising completion by 2020.

Two years later the pitch was unravelling: in December 2018 Meydan said Meydan One Mall was 60% structurally complete and on track for an early 2020 launch, while the 711m Dubai One tower had quietly dropped out of the picture — the CTBUH Skyscraper Center database lists it as cancelled. The mall's opening then kept slipping; a 2026 Dubai property-market review put completion at 2026-27.

A Dh25-30bn ($6.8-8.2bn) phase 1 missed its 2020 deadline; the 711m Dubai One tower was dropped, and the mall's opening slipped to 2026-27.

Meydan announced a 711m 'world's tallest residential tower' and a 2020 phase-1 date at the peak of the 2015 boom, before design or financing were fixed.

Its own executives admitted full completion would take 7-10 years while the launch promised phase 1 by 2020.

When the market cooled the tower quietly disappeared: it was never built, and the CTBUH Skyscraper Center database lists Dubai One as cancelled.

The phase-1 mall slipped from an early-2020 launch to 2026-27, so the record-breaking pitch ended as a late mall rather than a new world record.

Promising record-breaking world-firsts at a market peak locks a developer to a fixed date; when the market turns, records become the story of what was never built — scope should flex with reality.

Dubai One was dropped from the plan and never rose; Meydan shifted focus to Meydan One Mall, which was about 60% complete at end-2018 with an early-2020 launch that then slipped repeatedly. By 2026, a Dubai property-market review reported the mall's completion had moved to 2026-27 and that Meydan One apartment handovers were running into 2026-28. The other 2015 'world firsts' — longest indoor ski slope, largest fountain, highest observation deck — also fell away, leaving Meydan's Mohammed Bin Rashid City bet as a delayed mall and villas instead of the record-holder it announced.