New Telegraph, February 10th, 2015,
By: Dayo Ayeyemi
The planners and developers of Eko Atlantic City have deployed mobile app to showcase various investment opportunities awaiting investors as the development of the new city progresses. The mobile app was released for use on all new generation smart phone and tablets. Eko Atlantic is a 21st Century city that will compare with United Arab Emirate’s city of Dubai. It is an emerging city in Lagos, adjacent to Victoria Island, covering 10 million square metres .
The city is already visible from space. The groundwork has restored coastline eroded by the sea and is providing vital real estate for over 300,000 people to live and work. Already, the frame works of the 15-floor tower to serve as the new headquarters of Afren Plc have been completed while the paneling has commenced.
The project contractor, ITB Nigeria Limited, has showed so much confidence to meet the scheduled project’s delivery date. Also, an impeccable source disclosed to New Telegraph at the weekend that the first building of the five Eko Pearl Towers has been fully sold out off plan. According to the source, the pilling works of two of the structures have been completed. On the workability of the mobile app, Eko Atlantic’s Consultant for Communication, Mr. Brent Sadler, said that it allowed wouldbe investors to see the on-going development in all segments of the new city and investment opportunities in the comfort of their homes and offices through the use of their android phones instead of visiting the site.
“The smartest feature on the app is Augmented Reality (AR), a cutting- edge technology that displays a digitally enhanced view of objects or locations. Using the camera and sensors in a smart phone or tablet, AR adds layers of digital information such as video, photos, sounds, graphics or GPS data, directly on top of items in the real world,” he said.
In addition to an easy-to-use presentation, the app features a graphic overview of the infrastructure networks progress as well as gyroscope-enhanced virtual tour enabling users to navigate through the Eko Atlantic City development site just by moving their mobile device around. Justifying the launch of the app, Sadler said that the physical reality of the project was clear to see with the naked eye off the shore of Victoria Island, but with the app, the virtual reality has been brought to life.
He explained that the technology was made to be interactive with the new Eko Atlantic milestone newsletter available at the project’s sale office and online through the website. He said: “The pre-launch app is a curtain raiser for what comes next. What you can see with the app now takes the visibility of Eko Atlantic to an entirely new level. But we are going to make the app even better, smarter and more interactive.”
“Eko Atlantic’s Milestone newsletter, also online, which is launched with the new mobile app, enables recipients to interact with selected pages of the journal through the AR function. According to a source, the infrastructure works of the new city would advance this year. He said that over 46-kilometre of water drainage had been constructed. The source said: “We have done over 46 kilometres of underground drainage, 77,600 square metres of road has been done and everything about electrical power has been mapped out, while work has commenced since October 2014.
“17 per cent of water supply, which is 54.8 kilometres, has been done. For storm water drainage, a total of 63 kilometres has been done, 27 per cent telecom in the entire project has been finished, and 32 per cent of sewage has been completed.” The source hinted that there would be 10 bridges in phases one and two of the project, adding that one of the bridges with underpass canal is at an advanced stage of completion while works on other nine bridges are on-going.