Nod for Botawala chawl redevelopment project

After a long hiatus,the state government has given its nod to another cluster redevelopment project – that of the century-old Botawala chawl in Masgaon. The redevelopment of the chawl is only the fifth such project to be sanctioned in three years since the rules for cluster scheme came in to force.

On Friday,the state urban development department issued final orders for the project after Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan gave his go-ahead. The project on a 4,721 sq mts plot in Masgaon will be carried out by Sarah Housing Development Ltd. The existing two storey buildings in the colony have been in a perilously decrepit state and have been a perennial fixture on the annual list of extremely dilapidated building prepared by the Mumbai Board of Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA). The chawl was in the news in 2005 when the housing board forcefully evicted tenants living in two of the six buildings after a spate of building collapses in the wake of unusually heavy downpour claimed twenty lives. While some of the tenants moved out,several others,living on paltry rents of Rs 100 in the 100-150 sq ft apartments,stayed on fearing that they would languish endlessly in MHADA’s transit camps.

The Botawala trust had constructed the chawl in 1917 for housing workers in the nearby Mafatlal mills. SS Ratansi director of Sarah Housing,that bought over the chawl less than a decade ago,said that the 423 mill workers families will now be relocated in 365 sq ft flats spread across four 20 storey towers. The developer will earn his profit by selling apartments in another 50 tower that he will be allowed to build on the same site. “It took almost two years for us to get our project sanctioned despite it being the second project to be cleared by the high power committee for cluster redevelopment,” said Ratansi.

The HPC has till date approved more than two dozen proposals. However,only five projects have got the final nod from the state government.