Flavio Briatore to Open "Billionaire's Square" in Dubai

Italian playboy Flavio Briatore, (above, with his much younger lingerie model wife Elisabetta), has signed a deal to open a new Billionaire's Square complex in Dubai catering to those with unapologetically extravagant tastes. Building on the success of Briatore's Billionaire club for the super-rich on Sardinia's swank Costa Smeralda, the $150 million Billionaire's Square development will be constructed on the site of Dubai Media City's Palladium entertainment venue. The complex will include a boutique luxury hotel, a Billionaire Bar and Grill along with several other restaurants and bars, a VIP fitness club and a boutique selling items from Briatore's ostentatious Billionaire Couture line, maker of items like a $50,000 crocodile skin umbrella. The project is expected to be completed by the end of 2011. As my colleague Deirdre Woollard reported last year, Briatore's colorful career as a Formula 1 impresario linked to supermodels like Heidi Klum and Naomi Campbell came to an end in the wake of a race fixing scandal.