Mills 038; Boon

Adap was allotted the 450-sq ft Dadar flat after his crumbling chawl made way for a multi-storey last year under a public-private redevelopment plan.

Flash Forward
NOW hundreds of people like Adap are dreaming of little flats to call their own. Because the Central Mumbai redevelopment plans cleared by the Supreme Court8217;s okay to the sale of 600-acres of textile mill lands will encompass the peripheral areas, currently dotted by the red-tiled, two-storeyed, single-balcony chawls glorified in countless Bollywood movies.

Along with the deserted mill buildings, rusted pipelines and creeper-clad chimneys, these chawls, too, will make way for the swanky glass-and-steel commercial complexes, malls, multiplexes and residential complexes. And while the construction companies hardsell the premium flats to top-drawer investment bankers and corporate executives, the chawl residents will have the option of moving into 225-sq ft flats with attached bathrooms.

8216;8216;In two years, you will not recognise this place. This redevelopment is the best thing to have happened to the city. It will benefit everybody,8217;8217; says real estate developer Niranjan Hiranandani, about the transformation in Central Mumbai and the way it is touching the lives of the people.

Life-Work Equation
THE transformation began haltingly in the mid-1990s, when corporates started shifting base from South Mumbai to the more affordable Central Mumbai district. Employees saved half-an-hour on commutes while their bosses saved money on office rentals and by selling their high-cost Nariman Point and Cuffe Parade offices.

A 1991 Maharashtra government order to give one-third of the mill lands to MHADA for low-cost housing in lieu of permission to redevelop the rest helped many families to shift to Central Mumbai from crowded suburbs.

However, the subsequent legal battle between developers and environmentalists over the quota for open spaces and low-cost housing brought construction to a halt, even as prices shot up from Rs 3,000/sq ft in 2002 to Rs 6,500/sq ft now.

Post-Supreme Court verdict, construction companies believe the prices will not crash, but that the 30 per cent annual growth will stabilise at 10 per cent.

Interestingly, while most of the new-age companies8212;including Indiabulls and DLF8212;are planning to set up commercial towers, old city hands like Bombay Dyeing and Godrej are constructing residential complexes. This means the routine North-South commute will become a thing of the past for a large number of people.

8216;8216;For the first time,8217;8217; says Hiranandani, 8216;8216;Mumbaiites will have the option of working and living in the same place.8217;8217;

Singapore Swing
THE 6-km-long Byculla-Dadar belt can be the next Singapore if developers, municipal authorities and, of course, the enviromentalists have a long-term vision for the city.

At present, there are only a few pockets of world-class construction here. Morarjee Mills in Lower Parel has been converted into the Peninsula Corporate Park with four blue glass-and-steel buildings. Inside, the infrastructure is comparable to that of an office building in any developed country. Multinationals like Hutch, AIG Insurance, Reuters and Metlife and local companies like Bharti and Nicholas Piramal have shifted offices here so that they can provide an 8216;8216;international feel8217;8217; to their employees and customers.

With demand rising for corporate office space8212;thanks to a booming economy and increased foreign direct investment flowing into the country8212;Central Mumbai is emerging as the only place in the city for a new business district. An expensive Nariman Point has no place for newcomers while the Bandra-Kurla Complex is getting saturated.

The city government, led by Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, will have to think out of box while granting permission for new construction so that the new towers complement each other in aesthetics. 8216;8216;We need Mumbai to meet international standards now,8217;8217; says architect Hafeez Contractor.

Hope Floats
HOWEVER, the redevelopment is not just about corporates and construction companies. A hefty percentage of Mumbai8217;s 60 per cent shanty-dwelling populace live on either side of Delisle Road or N M Joshi Marg, which cuts through Central Mumbai. Many of them work in the nearby offices as peons or security guards.

With new construction coming up, the government will have to come out with a rehabilitation plan for the pavement-dwellers so that the living standards for the majority of Mumbai8217;s population can improve. For this, urban planners and developers say the Mhada, the MMRDA and CIDCO must come forward to construct 225-sq ft flats for the slumdwellers.

The MMRDA has already constructed 50,000 houses for its infrastructure project-affected people and moved people away from slums. 8216;8216;The same formula can be replicated so that the pavements can be freed for people to walk on,8217;8217; says a Mumbai developer.

However, to make Mumbai a true world city, the state government has to take a leading role to bring together developers, urban planners and its own construction companies.

The state government will also have to scrap the Urban Land Ceiling Act, especially if it wants to access funds from the Jawaharlal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission, a corpus set up by Finance Minister P Chidambaram in the 2005 budget. The Maharashtra government has promised to do away with the Act, but has sought a five-year cool-off period.

With the Worli-Bandra sea link coming up to the West and a Metro rail project cutting Central Mumbai, and Sewri-Nevi Mumbai sea link project now being planned in the East, Mumbai is set for its biggest-ever transformation.

And Central Mumbai is bang in the middle of the action, both in terms of new construction of infrastructure and buildings.

Crowd Control
An estimated 80 million square feet is to be built in Mumbai8217;s textile mill lands: an opportunity8212;and a challenge8212;to upgrade the city8217;s infrastructure

CHITRANGADA CHOUDHURY

MOST of the big infrastructure projects currently underway in Mumbai, like widening of express highways are in the eastern and western suburbs, giving Central Mumbai a complete miss, though its mill lands are slated to see an estimated 80 million square feet of built-up area being constructed in the near future.

So as the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation BMC clears building plans for mill land redevelopment, officials worry whether, like South Mumbai8217;s Malabar Hill, the residential towers set to come up in the mill complexes have to resort to tankers for water supply. Or take sanitation. A senior BMC engineer says that the existing 9-inch diameter drain of the area will have to be reworked for new water usage and disposal patterns.

Millowner-turned-developer Rajeev Piramal, who8217;s redeveloping five mills8212;his residential projects include towers of 30 to 50 storeys8212;in the area says most projects are ensuring that they place 8216;8216;minimum load on the infrastructure. We are putting in sewage treatment and water recycling plans in each of our redevelopments.8217;8217;

Says city historian Sharada Dwivedi: 8216;8216;The 600 acres demanded the formation of a central authority who would implement a overarching plan for this cluster of mills.8217;8217;

She points back to one of Mumbai8217;s finest business districts, Ballard Estate, currently home to offices like Reliance and the National Textile Corporation that was created in this manner after inviting representations from associations and the public.

The Maharashtra government had similar plans, setting up as many as three committees in 10 years to suggest 8216;8216;holistic development8217;8217; for the area.

The most comprehensive proposal came from the 1996 state-appointed study group, comprising experts like Charles Correa and Deepak Parekh. They suggested integrating the lands of all defunct mills, carrying out hitherto unseen experiments including opening up what Mumbai sorely lacks8212;East-West arteries, and creating a separate financing body to extend soft loans to new developments, given that several millowners were in the red.

Such planned development, they concluded, would increase the overall profitability of commercial development on the lands too, while millowners and developers profits could be augmented by giving additional FSI Floor Space Index.

What8217;s the future likely to look like? Akshay Kumar, CEO of the real estate consultancy Colliers Jardine, says, 8216;8216;With chaotic traffic situation, power shortage and no road access, the current infrastructure obviously does not match the pace of proposed development. Infrastructure needs investment, so in that sense the development will definitely bring in more money in the form of duty, taxes. The monthly outgoings of the property that will be developed will contribute towards that.8217;8217;

8216;Development in place of decay8217;
RAJEEV PIRAMAL

THE Supreme Court judgment is extremely positive for the redevelopment of Mumbai8217;s textile mill lands. The fact that this judgment is so comprehensive and unambiguous means that all the projects that were on the drawing board and, more importantly, all the projects that had already started after getting all the requisite permissions from various authorities can now go ahead without any further delays.

This will also come as a big relief for all those individuals who had already bought flats in the new residential projects as they are now assured of the fact that they will get these flats.

There will be a significant change in Central Mumbai as land locked up in mills continues to get developed. Central Mumbai will emerge as a key hub in the city and will be comparable to, if not surpassing, any of the other central business districts of the city.

Where earlier there was urban decay in the heart of the city, now we will have top quality development top quality does not automatically mean high-end, as certain sections are arguing of residential, commercial and retail space.

For example, my company, Morarjee Realties, is in the process of redeveloping 3.5 million square feet of real estate in five erstwhile mills. We finished Peninsula Corporate Park in Morarjee Mill 2 between 2001 and 2003 and it meets all the requirements of modern workspace in the financial capital8212;a planned layout, sufficient internal roads, parking space and, best of all, natural light.

We are currently building similar office complexes at one of the Swan units and at Dawn Mill. On the other hand, Ashok Towers, quality residential complexes, are coming up at Morarjee 1 and the other Swan unit.

But the benefits that flow from this redevelopment are not for a narrow section, eventually the whole city of Mumbai will benefit greatly from the development of lands belonging to cotton textile mills. While I do not think that the price of real estate will come down in the near future, the availability of this land and the constant but steady supply of land as developments get completed will ensure that there is stability in real estate prices in the medium to long term.

Second, the development of this land will help Mumbai maintain its position as the financial capital of India.

There are arguments from those opposed to the current projects but none of their claims are justified. The fact of the matter is that the development that will occur on our mill lands will adhere to strict quality and environmental standards. These developments will also result in large areas of private open spaces as well as green areas.

Above all, redeveloping mills will give more land to the city, vis-a-vis under the original 1991 rule, when mills redeveloped within their existing structures and surrendered nothing.

Piramal is executive vice-chairman, Morarjee Realties

8216;State govt must intervene8217;
P K DAS

THE Supreme Court can intervene when there are conflicting interpretations of a law. But it is the job of the government to set out the larger objective of the city8217;s development. The development of 600 acres of land in the heart of the city is a rare and challenging opportunity for effecting much-needed change and solving some of Mumbai8217;s key problems, rather than frittering away in individual and disparate developments.

First, there8217;s Mumbai8217;s insurmountable housing shortage. There is no supply of affordable housing for the poor; large sections of the middle-class, too, cannot afford the high-priced real estate. Both the central and state governments have stopped constructing housing for low-income groups, and Mumbai8217;s development plan does not address the urgent need to allocate additional land for housing. Development of mill land gives the city a rare opportunity to promote affordable mass housing for the poor and the lower middle-class, along with other construction.

In the present blueprint, which now bears the imprimatur of the Supreme Court, there will be a large quantum of high-end housing, but this will not contribute in any manner to reducing the housing shortage in the city, that will rise in spite of mill land development.

The city, as we know, has a very low ratio of open space at 0.03 acres per thousand people against the international standard of 4 acres per thousand people. Under the approved policy, spaces created will be exclusive and private.

The city lacks social infrastructure too, including affordable schools, health care and recreational facilities. We had a chance in the mill land development to fulfill some of these needs that are vital to social development. There may be some high-end schools and hospitals built here but these will be beyond the reach of most people.

Comprehensive planning of the entire mill land, along with development control regulations as formulated by the government in 1991 where one-third of the total land was meant for public housing to be developed by MHADA, another one third for public open spaces and the remaining one-third to be developed by the mill owners for profit but with FSI on two-thirds of the total area would have led to meaningful development in the larger interest of the city.

But subsequently the state government carried out dubious amendments to the regulation in 2001.

There will, indeed, be large volumes of construction but, shockingly, there has not been any study of the impact of this growth on environment and the carrying capacity of the area.

In spite of the Supreme Court verdict validating the development policy in force, the state government has the right, which it must exercise, to intervene in the public interest to frame new policies to regulate the development of mill land in accordance with the overall development of the city and the needs of all its people, so as to make Mumbai a truly international city. But the decisions taken by the government will depend only on the pressures put on it by public opinion in the city.

Das is a Mumbai-based architect