oman Eyes on the Balls

     One of Oman’s top professional soccer clubs has set out to build what’s been called the nation’s “biggest sports infrastructure initiative.”
     Fanja Club, an eight-time winner of the nation’s soccer championship, plans to build the facility on a 75-acre parcel it owns in the Sah al Ahmar neighborhood of Bidbid, roughly 35 miles southwest of Muscat. The facility’s sports-related attractions will include a soccer academy, a hospital tailored to athletes, two gymnasiums (one for men, one for women), a “world-class 40-lane bowling alley,” and a nine-hole golf course. The income-producing part of the venture will consist of villas, a hotel, a shopping mall, and a water park.
     “It is a dream come true for me and the club's board members,” Hamyar al Ismaily, the club’s chairman, told the Muscat Daily when the project was announced. “We hope this will help the club become self-reliant and help the youth of Oman become top-class sportspersons.”
     The to-be-named facility will cater not only to Omanis but to European soccer clubs looking for a winter training center. To build it, Fanja is teaming up with Kuwait Investment Company, an entity controlled by Sheikh Talal bin Mohammed al Sabah, a member of Kuwait’s royal family. The partners are operating as New Investment Company.
     Fanja aims to break ground on the facility in 2014 and to open some of its sports attractions in 2015.

     The original version of the preceding post first appeared in the January 2013 issue of the World Edition of the Golf Course Report.