INDEPENDENT PERSPECTIVE. SENIOR INVOLVEMENT.
In Saudi Arabia and across the GCC.
We help landowners, investors and developers shape opportunities, structure partnerships and guide development from early decisions through implementation.
Framework precedes form.
An apartment, a fund, or a mega development.
An investment ambition, large or small.
Let’s TalkTHE MIDARA APPROACH
Four actions. One connected perspective.Aligning commercial objectives, a sense of place and the expertise needed to carry the strategy into implementation.
SHAPE
Understand the land, the market, the people and the investment ambition. Test what the opportunity should become before design and capital lock in assumptions.
What should this become — and why?
THE WORK BEHIND THE DECISION
Development strategy · Feasibility · Highest and best use · Destination positioning
OUR VALUE
Midara brings these disciplines together around your development mandate. Our role can begin with a specific decision and extend into the coordination and oversight needed to carry it through.
Bringing clarity and control from brief to delivery—balancing and managing time, cost, and quality; controlling communication; coordinating design, consultants, and authority approvals; managing risk; and applying value engineering to protect value and design intent.
Explore relevant project experience ↗Development strategy and feasibility. Highest and best use. Masterplan and development briefs. Destination and market positioning.
Commercial and joint-venture structuring support. Negotiation and due-diligence coordination. Governance, risk, phasing and implementation planning.
Investor, developer, operator and institutional partnerships. Assessment of strategic fit and commercial alignment. Specialist team selection, design and procurement strategy.
Client representation. Development and delivery oversight. Design governance. Marketing, sales and leasing strategy aligned with the original proposition.
FOUNDED BY MIREILLE BABTI
Founder’s career highlightsA wider view.
A closer involvement.
More than 24 years across the Gulf and Australia, connecting commercial strategy, governance, design and development.
Investment-ready projects originated and packaged
Long-term contractual revenue through negotiated agreements
Asset-value enhancement
Value engineering and cost savings
Agreements executed across investors, hotel and mall operators, consultants and contractors
Mireille Babti held the role of Chief Development Officer at Knowledge Economic City in Al-Madinah Al-Munawwarah, where she led the development of its 6.8-million-square-metre masterplan.
Her earlier leadership roles include Chief Development Officer at Edamah, Bahrain’s sovereign real estate arm, and Executive Director at Premier Group Bahrain. Her career spans waterfront destinations, mixed-use developments and master-planned communities across the Gulf and Australia, including subdivision and master-planning across more than 500 hectares.
She brings commercial strategy, partnership negotiations, governance, design and delivery into one development perspective. Her work encompasses investment-ready project origination, long-term revenue creation, asset-value enhancement and cost optimisation.
Mireille also taught at the University of Strathclyde, exploring the international business environment. That experience informs her executive workshops and contributions to discussions on development, investment and governance.
Midara combines this direct senior involvement with an established network of specialist collaborators, selected around the needs of each mandate.
QUALIFICATIONS & CREDENTIALS
MBA — University of Strathclyde
Master of Project Management — University of Technology Sydney
Bachelor of Law — University of New England, Australia
Bachelor of Architectural Engineering
Certified Independent Director — Hawkamah / Mudara Institute of Directors, UAE (2016).
Executive judgment. Micro- and macro-level involvement.
THE DEVELOPMENT QUESTION
Led the Misk / Riyadh Schools business plan, negotiated contract terms alongside KEC’s legal counsel and closed the agreement. Established the development and design team, with weekly progress oversight and early identification of risks.
Secured a school agreement representing SAR 400 million in lease revenue over 25 years, connecting the institutional relationship with the commercial and development framework.
THE DEVELOPMENT QUESTION
Brought together the municipal lease, joint-venture and operator agreements, support for the SPV, design development, infrastructure procurement, value engineering and main-contract appointment.
Negotiated agreements representing approximately SAR 400 million in long-term revenue, alongside approximately SAR 50 million in value-engineering and cost savings.
THE DEVELOPMENT QUESTION
Assembled and led the consultant team for the Destination Bahrain strategy, connecting market assessment, tourism and infrastructure opportunities, feasibility and the available land bank. The strategy became a blueprint for the nationwide project plan over the following 10 years.
The connection: a destination proposition translated into a programme of potential developments.
SAUDI ARABIA & THE HOLY CITIES
International perspective. Local intelligence.MAKKAH ■ MADINAH
How do we serve people better?
Makkah and Madinah hold an enduring place in people’s lives. Their next chapter is taking shape at a new scale: Saudi Arabia welcomed 18.03 million international Umrah pilgrims in 2025 and targets 30 million annually by 2030.
For Midara, that scale raises a development question: how can investment enrich the visitor journey while strengthening the everyday life of each city?
Midara’s perspective connects hospitality, education, culture, wellness, public realm and family life. Places that welcome visitors while remaining useful and relevant to the people who call them home.
For international investors, we connect investment expectations with locally executable development strategy — bringing the opportunity, its context and the right specialist expertise into the same conversation.
Midara helps clients navigate the regulatory requirements, cultural nuances and institutional relationships that shape development in Saudi Arabia and the wider GCC. We connect clients with relevant local expertise and coordinate specialist input, bringing the local context into commercial and development decisions from the outset.
Explore our thinking on enduring places ↓2025 · RECORDED
18.03mInternational Umrah pilgrims welcomed to Saudi Arabia in 2025.
Pilgrim Experience Program ↗2030 · NATIONAL TARGET
30mInternational Umrah pilgrims annually targeted by Saudi Vision 2030.
Saudi Vision 2030 · 2025 report ↗The figures describe international Umrah pilgrims to Saudi Arabia. The 2030 figure is a national target. Sources reviewed September 2026.
IDEAS FOR ENDURING PLACES
Woven into the life of a place.
Examining the enduring role of Awqaf as a pillar of social sustainability, and exploring how its principles can once again be meaningfully woven into real estate development, destination-making and the long-term life of our cities. This research also considers how emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence, can support that enduring purpose in a changing urban world.
Coming soon
EXECUTIVE WORKSHOPS
From experience to shared understanding.Midara offers practical workshops for leaders and teams navigating development decisions. Three connected areas of learning, grounded in the relationship between commercial ambition, governance and implementation.
Connect the investment ambition with a clear development brief, decision-making structure, responsibilities and a pathway to implementation.
Explore plausible scenarios, test assumptions and understand how changing market, economic and social conditions could shape an opportunity.
Examine commercial, contractual, design and delivery risks, their interdependencies, and the governance needed to identify and manage them.
Bring a development perspective to the conversation.
Speaking and panel contributions on real estate development, investment, governance and the future of places. Midara welcomes opportunities to contribute to forums that advance the industry, challenge established thinking and shape the future of development.
Explore a year to discover the conversation.
2025
London & Madinah · Speaker / Presenter
2024
Madinah Chamber of Commerce · Panellist
2018
State-Owned Enterprises · Armani Hotel · Panellist
2018
Real estate panels · Panellist
2017
Real estate panels · Panellist
2016
Bahrain Chamber of Commerce · Speaker on real estate development
YOUR NEXT CHAPTER
In Saudi Arabia and across the GCC.
Whether you’re a bank, an investor or a real estate developer,
let’s begin a conversation.
info@midaradevelopment.com