Mumbai’s costliest road gets richer

South Mumbai’s Altamount Road, which boasts of the highest realty prices in the city and is home to many rich and famous, will now have the country’s top two industrialists...

South Mumbai’s Altamount Road, which boasts of the highest realty prices in the city and is home to many rich and famous, will now have the country’s top two industrialists — Mukesh Ambani and Ratan Tata — living just half a kilometre apart.

While Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani’s 27-storey home coming up along the central part of the road is no more a secret, the Tatas went about the construction of their bungalow and a seven-storey building at the dead end of the road in a hush-hush manner. In fact, the Tatas, BMC officials say, have already begun shifting to their new home, while the Ambanis’ home, ‘Antilia’, will not be complete before November 2008.

Antilia, named after a mythical island believed to be located to the west of Europe in the Atlantic Ocean, is designed “in direct response to unique programmatic elements and a desire to maximise the views around the site”, say Perkins+Will, the design architects, on their website.

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The building, the website explains, will be an “undulating ribbon, or snake frame” —- one of its kind in Mumbai. “The vertical surfaces of the frame will be articulated with a steel lattice and contain a series of planter beds, effectively transforming the facades into living green walls which will filter light and enhance the local micro-climate of each level,” the website says.

On the other hand, the Tatas’ home is a comparatively simpler project. According to BMC officials, it comprises a 661-sq m bungalow and a seven-storey building, which were approved in May 2002.

The plot now owned by Ratan Tata was previously J R D Tata’s rented bungalow ‘The Cairn’, a palatial Scottish style bungalow with an outhouse and a garden measuring about 5,647 sq yards. JRD and his wife Thelma lived there for over 50 years, paying rent to the Bai Awabai F Petit Residuary Estate Trust, till Tata Sons bought it for Rs 50 crore in 1999.

“The new bungalow, a ground-plus-one (two-storey) structure, is ready and the occupation certificate was handed over to the Tatas on April 12, though the exterior work of the building is still pending. We have been told that Ratan Tata has already started shifting to the premises,” said the BMC official.

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According to sources, the seven-storey building, with a permissible built-up area of 4,721 sq m, along with the proposed 2,433 sq m in the same compound, will be used to house directors of the Tata group of companies.

Mukesh Ambani’s designs on Antilia are much bigger. “Antilia’s approved height is 172 metres, enough to build 40 storeys. But considering the plan Ambanis have submitted, where each floor has a different height, the actual number of floors is less,” says a senior official at the Building Proposal Department of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, which okayed the plan in 2003.

The approved built-up area is 4,778.09 sq m (only for residential purposes), and the permissible built-up area is 4,939.81 sq m. According to the approved plan, the official said, the building will have six floors for parking, several floors for gardens and two floors for a gym and a swimming pool each. Entertainment floors will house a 50-seat theatre while two floors have been set apart for guest apartments, the official said, adding that more than one floor has been dedicated for kitchen, laundry and other similar services.

The plan also proposes a helipad at the top of the building, but the BMC has not given its clearance for it.