Firm ready to break ground for Istanbul Finance Center

BURSA - Hürriyet Daily News

Construction for Istanbul’s first international finance center will begin next month and is planned to be completed in 2016, says Ali Ağaoğlu.

Construction on Istanbul’s first global finance center will begin next month and is planned to be completed in 2016, according to Ali Ağaoğlu, the contractor of the project and one of the leading actors in Turkey’s recent real estate sector boom. Nearly 8.5 million cubic meters of soil will be dug out and nearly 7.5 million cubic meters of it reused, said Ağaoğlu, a rising star in the local construction sector with several projects, at a press event on Dec. 22 in the northwestern province of Bursa.

Ağaoğlu, a rising company in the local construction sector with several joint projects underway with the state-run property developer TOKİ, will build a 2,500-seat conference hall, a mall, a five-star hotel, office buildings and residences as part of the planned Istanbul Finance Center. Akdeniz İnşaat, a subsidiary of Ağaoğlu, won the recreation area tender issued Nov. 28 by state-run Emlak Real Estate Investment Company, with the highest bid of 1.46 billion Turkish Liras.

The project includes all infrastructure development including excavation work, connection roads, parking garages, technical stations, a subway station and landscaping work.

Ağaoğlu also said his group will invest 12.2 billion liras until 2016 in the construction, tourism and energy fields, expecting 22 billion liras in revenues in the same period, investing some 9 billion liras in construction, 2.5 billion liras in energy and 700 million liras in tourism.

He emphasized the importance of the Turkish government’s urban transformation law both for himself and for the sector, saying if this law had not passed Turkey could not keep growing.

Ağaoğlu also praised the government’s newly passed “reciprocity law,” which allows citizens of countries party to the agreement to own real estate in the other country. “The money used to remain seated in the Gulf, but we drew their intention to Turkey,” Ağaoğlu said.