Tilal’s $1.6 Billion Heart of Khobar Remains Unbuilt

Tilal Real Estate’s SAR 6 billion ($1.6 billion) Heart of Khobar district is still listed as announced, 22 months after it was staged in Riyadh. A September 2026 project file says work has not started. The hotel brand is booked for 2028.

The company sold a walkable “urban village” for Saudi families in Al Khobar’s Al Rawabi district at Cityscape Global in November 2024. The bet is that the Eastern Province will pay for a mixed-use core even as prestige capital sits in the capital.

Tilal Is Betting SAR 6 Billion on Khobar

Heart of Khobar, or HOK, is Tilal’s first master-planned district after years of housing plots with the National Housing Company. CEO Abdulrahman AlBassam called it a step toward smart, integrated cities and a way to lift Khobar as a place to live and put money.

The tag is large for a private Eastern Province name and small beside the Public Investment Fund’s land bank. AlBassam told Al-Eqtisadiah that PIF-owned players hold 400 million square metres. HOK covers 268,813 square metres on King Faisal Road.

Khobar can still clear a housing and hotel product. Knight Frank put 2025 apartment values at SAR 4,115 per square metre in Khobar, about 16% above Dammam’s SAR 3,555, with the wider Dammam Metropolitan Area up 2.5% to SAR 3,835. Eastern Province housing stock reached 823,750 units in 2025, up 4%.

Demand is not the hole in the wager. Delivery is. Two mixed-use jobs a short drive away are already in the ground, and HOK is still a board, a brand, and a memo.

What the Riyadh Launch Contained

Cityscape Global ran 11 to 14 November 2024 at the Riyadh Exhibition and Convention Center in Malham. That is when Tilal first unveiled the scheme, with AlBassam on the floor and the National Housing Company’s chief, Mohammed Al-Batti, walking the stand.

Tilal later said the week produced 10 agreements. The public package was a three-phase district of 14 parts: homes, offices, a mall, a business park, a community centre, a cinema, hotels, serviced apartments, co-working floors, and leisure. The design line was an urban village with homes, work, and play on one walkable site.

WHAT THE MASTER PLAN PUTS ON THE BLOCK

• The site: 268,813 square metres in Al Rawabi, on King Faisal Road in Khobar.
• The homes: 400 apartments, listed as available on Tilal’s own project board.
• The walk share: up to 89% of daily movement planned on foot, per the launch design claim.
• The garage: 3,900 car park spaces in the same launch statement sent to project desks.
• The clock: three phases, with Tilal saying at launch the work would finish within four years.

Four years from November 2024 lands in late 2028. That window still fits a hotel opening in 2028. It is tight against a tracker date of Q4 2027 if dirt has not moved.

The Heart of Khobar project is a strategic step towards the future of smart and integrated cities in the Kingdom, as it contributes to achieving an exceptional quality of life for residents and visitors alike.

Abdulrahman AlBassam, CEO, Tilal Real Estate, Cityscape Global Riyadh

He also said the aim was a living mix of sustainability, comfort, and luxury, and that the three phases would add value to the Eastern Province. The speech did not put a unit count on the homes. That 400 figure sits on Tilal’s site and on the later tracker.

Ennismore Dated Its Khobar Hotel for 2028

Two weeks after the fair, Ennismore and Tilal signed 25hours Hotel Heart of Khobar and brought Working From_, the group’s coworking line, into Saudi Arabia for the first time. Ennismore’s note is dated 25 November 2024. Tilal’s own post puts the hotel opening in 2028.

The hotel is specified at 170 guestrooms and 80 serviced apartments, which matches the 250 hotel rooms in Tilal’s launch statement. Working From_ is a 2,000 square metre floor of desks and offices around kitchen pantries, with meeting rooms, printing, and hotel-rate perks for members.

Ennismore placed the hotel next to Khobar landmarks and the Corniche, and noted the 25-kilometre causeway to Bahrain. Tilal said the district is a master plan with WATG London. AlBassam tied the deal to Tamimi Group as a strategic investor, Ennismore as the operator, and Tilal as the urban developer.

Louis Aboud, Ennismore’s regional vice president of development, said the pairing was meant to reset hospitality and coworking in the area. A brand on paper is useful. It is not a foundation stone.

A 1.2 Billion Riyal MoU Covers the First Slice

A full year after the first Cityscape turn, Tilal was back in Riyadh for money. On 18 November 2025, Albilad Capital, the investment arm of Bank Albilad, said it had signed a memorandum of understanding with Tilal to work a Khobar plot of nearly 100,000 square metres in Khobar at an estimated SAR 1.2 billion, with homes, shops, offices, and 25hours hotels.

That memo is 20% of the SAR 6 billion headline and well under half the 268,813 square metre master plan. Tilal posted the same news on 19 November 2025, calling it a fund to carry out phase one of Heart of Khobar.

استثمار واعد يفتح آفاقًا جديدة في مدينة الخبر وخلال معرض #سيتي_سكيب_العالمي،
أعلنت شركة تلال العقارية و #البلاد_المالية عن توقيع مذكرة تفاهم لتأسيس صندوق استثماري بقيمة 1.2 مليار ريال لتنفيذ المرحلة الأولى من مشروع #قلب_الخبر pic.twitter.com/ybSN0hbLUz

— Tilal | تلال (@TilalSa) November 19, 2025

Zaid bin Mohammed AlMufarih, Albilad Capital’s chief executive, framed the Cityscape 2025 round as product for investors and finance for high-quality jobs. A memorandum is not a closed fund, not a building permit, and not a crane. It is the second public proof that HOK still needed a capital-markets partner after the launch-week applause.

FROM CITYSCAPE STAGE TO A STILL-QUIET SITE

1. 11-14 November 2024: Tilal unveils Heart of Khobar at Cityscape Global in Riyadh and cites 10 agreements.
2. 25 November 2024: Ennismore signs 25hours Hotel Heart of Khobar and Working From_, with the hotel dated 2028.
3. 18-19 November 2025: Albilad Capital and Tilal sign a SAR 1.2 billion memorandum for phase one on nearly 100,000 square metres.
4. 27 September 2026: Markets of Tomorrow still files the district as announced, with a Q4 2027 completion target.

The gap between a 2024 stage set and a 2025 financing memo is the part of the bet the launch copy left out. Private master plans in the Kingdom now compete with state land and state credit, and HOK is running that race in public.

Tilal’s Family-Housing Pitch Is a Small Residential Core

The launch line was housing for Saudi families in a pedestrian district. The residential count on Tilal’s site is 400 apartments. That is a real block. It is not a new town.

Tilal was built for volume housing. It launched in 2020 as an alliance of Al-Tamimi Group, Kabbani Group, and AlOthman Group, drawing on more than 114 affiliated firms in engineering, contracting, materials, and upkeep. AlBassam, based in Khobar, previously worked as an Aramco exploration geophysicist and sits on the Asharqia Chamber’s real-estate committee.

The housing book is still the company’s centre of gravity. Beside HOK it lists 1,250 apartments in Dammam, 420 villas at Al Mukaimen in Madinah, and 520 villas at Qamra in Qatif, with Al Fursan and Al Narjis in Riyadh marked sold out. AlBassam also described a separate NHC track of 3,000 units in four cities for more than SAR 3 billion, and said Tilal was moving from sub-development into master development. HOK is that jump.

TILAL’S NAMED HOUSING BOARDS

• Heart of Khobar: 400 apartments in Al Rawabi, still sold as available.
• Dammam Front: 1,250 apartments, with unit sizes from about 175 to 300 square metres on the project page.
• Al Mukaimen, Madinah: 420 villas, still listed as available.
• Qamra, Qatif: 520 villas, marked sold out.
• Al Fursan and Al Narjis, Riyadh: villa communities marked sold out after NHC partnership sales.

A 400-home core inside a SAR 6 billion mixed-use label means most of the value sits in the mall, offices, hotel, and parking. Families may live there. The profit case is the rest of the 14 parts.

Walk-First Design Still Plans Thousands of Parking Bays

Khobar was laid out in 1947 as the Kingdom’s first planned city, an Aramco grid of wide streets and repeated blocks built around the car. Heart of Khobar is sold as the opposite: interleaved homes, jobs, and shops, with up to 89% of movement on foot.

The same launch statement listed 3,900 parking spaces. That figure does not kill the walk claim. It does show how a Gulf district still budgets for cars even when the drawings put people on the pavement. A garage that large is a bet on shoppers and hotel guests arriving by vehicle from Dammam, Dhahran, and the causeway, not only on residents padding to a cinema.

WATG’s live-work-play layout is the standard international answer to that grid. Whether Al Rawabi will behave like a village depends on shade, block length, and what actually opens in phase one, not on a percentage from a 2024 brochure.

Avenues and Ajdan Are Already in the Ground

The Eastern Province is not waiting for HOK. Markets of Tomorrow, which last verified the Tilal file on 27 September 2026, says Heart of Khobar has not yet started construction and still targets Q4 2027. It also tracks two other mixed-use jobs in Al Khobar that are under construction, and puts the three-project pipeline at 880 residences and keys.

KHOBAR MIXED-USE PIPELINE

The Avenues sits about 0.6 miles from HOK on the tracker map, a SAR 7.3 billion mall and tower scheme with Four Seasons and Canopy hotels in the mix. Ajdan Infinity is listed 4.0 miles away on the Corniche. HOK’s 400 homes are the smaller residential number of the two housing counts in that set.

Independent talk about Khobar’s new mixed-use stock bunches around those two sites, because they already have a construction story. Tilal’s own account is still the main voice for Heart of Khobar, which is what a project looks like when the next picture is a signed board, not a slab.

AlBassam’s four-year remark from November 2024 still points at late 2028 if phase one moves now. Ennismore’s 2028 hotel date is the one calendar the developer and the operator have both printed. The Q4 2027 tracker date only works if the announced file changes, and soon.