Mumbai Update II - project news from Mumbai ‎

[Cov Boy]

BTW I think this building should be built in Nariman Point, Worli or Cuff Parade as it would look far better and would improve the skyline in these areas.

[MYSTIC]

Originally Posted by Cov Boy

BTW I think this building should be built in Nariman Point, Worli or Cuff Parade as it would look far better and would improve the skyline in these areas.

Worli may be.But its impossible to find a plot big enough to fit in a project like this. Even if a plot is available just imagine its price.Cuffe Parade and Narimanpoint are the most expensive places in in South Asia as far as property rates are concerned.

[Cov Boy]

Worli may be.But its impossible to find a plot big enough to fit in a project like this. Even if a plot is available just imagine its price.Cuffe Parade and Narimanpoint are the most expensive places in in South Asia as far as property rates are concerned.

That true Mystic. NP & CP are very expensive indeed hence the developments in the suburbs of Mumbai. However I hope that NP and CP can be further improved as these areas need revamping.

[itsmevishal2k4]

i have a question i keep reading about like new buildings and proposals and stuff for like worli, thane, powai(mostly hirandani) .... i was jus wonderin wut happened to bandra, khar, santa cruz, andheri i thuahgt werent they supposed to be like the elite areas and stuff
idk i lived/live(long story) in bandra and u.s.a but like we were trying on gettin our building rebuilt not tdr but rebuilt and i think tdr was the new trend cause there were like a whole lotta buildings under tdr but anyway
does anyone know of any plans for the western subabarbs mostly like bandra and adjoining

[Bombay Boy]

On brink of a makeover, here’s why all eyes are on BMC polls

Kavitha IyerPosted online: Monday, January 15, 2007 at 0000 hrs Print Email

MUMBAI, JANUARY 14: All municipalities build drains and sewers. Many run crematoria, hospitals and primary schools too. But, globally, nowhere does a civic corporation also operate an intricate electricity supply system with 8,20,000 consumers, a fleet of 3,400 buses carrying 45 lakh passengers every day, Asia’s largest urban water supply network, colleges where the country’s best medical students aspire to study, a clutch of museums — there’s even a sex museum — and theme gardens, markets and heritage tours.

So, when Mumbai’s 83 lakh voters cast their vote at the February 1 elections to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), they’ll be deciding how the city with global dreams — poised at the brink of a critical makeover — will run in the future, what roads the investor from New York will drive his Toyota on, how much water supply will reach the international convention centre at Bandra Kurla Complex, how the tourist routes will liven up, whether Nariman Point’s influential will pay more property tax.

Projects worth Rs 3,000 crore have been submitted under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission by the BMC alone, apart from the Rs 1,800-crore Brihanmumbai Storm Water Drainage Project. Also, following the 944-mm deluge of July 2005, there’s a sense that the coming couple of years are crucial — Mumbai can do a Shanghai or crumble completely under its own weight.

But across party lines, all agree it’s Mumbai’s kingsize budget that makes the BMC election so vital. “The largest civic budget in India,” says Congress MP Milind Deora, readying campaign schedules for elections to 10 municipalities across Maharashtra on February 1. “So economically, that’s a huge reason.” BJP city unit leader Shaina NC agrees: “No other election is as important,” she says. “Look at its budget, it’s more than several states’ annual budgets.”

That’s old hat now. But the numbers are still incredible: For 2006-07, outlays for capital expenditure alone were over Rs 3,674 crore. Add to that the revenue account expenditure of Rs 6,190 crore and the figure creeps towards Rs 10,000 crore. (Arunachal Pradesh’s annual budget this year was Rs 1,500 crore, the other north-eastern states’ have similar budgets, Uttaranchal’s was Rs 6,000 crore.)

Append the BEST budget — the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s own transport and electricity supply undertaking — and the gross total budget outlay for 2006-07 is Rs 12,500 crore. Still, weigh it against tax contributions — Rs 58,000 crore annually — to the Centre and it’s chickenfeed, grumble industrialists and bloggers.

But contractors to corporators, everybody agrees that true to Mumbai’s nature, its civic body means big business. “Though it should not happen,” says senior Shiv Sena leader Manohar Joshi, “when corruption is rampant, people want to become BMC corporators for the money they can earn.”

Then there’s power, apart from revenue collection and policing, all else about governing Mumbai is left to the 134-year-old civic body, points out Parag Alavani, a lawyer, two-time BJP corporator and party leader in the BMC. “From birth certificates to death certificates, electricity supply, transport, emergency services, water supply, primary education, health services, infrastructure, every aspect of a Mumbaiite’s life is touched by the BMC,” Alavani says.

So, some combination of prosperity and power leads party activists to the BMC polls, says a Youth Congress leader, first-time BMC ticket-seeker now hoping to grow in stature within the party. After all, Joshi, a former Lok Sabha Speaker and Maharashtra chief minister before that, was once a BMC corporator and then Mumbai mayor in 1976-77.

Like Joshi, several prominent BMC corporators have made it big in state and national politics — NCP’s Chhagan Bhujbal was once mayor, so was Murli Deora, Speaker Datta Nalawade was once a BMC corporator, as were MLAs Gopal Shetty, Ashok Jadhav, Baba Siddique, etc.

The younger Deora recollects how his father, former Mumbai mayor and now Union petroleum minister would explain the significance of BMC elections. “Rubbish, I’d say,” he remembers. “Over time, I understood.” With a minister and an MP in the house, when there’s a water crisis or anxiety over a fresh crop of highrises around their Pedder Road home, the Deoras must talk to their local corporator, Congressman Gunvant Sheth.

“And, as local infrastructure issues gain prominence, people must realise that the right occasion to come out and voice their worries is the civic election,” Deora says. “This is the election that decides Mumbai.”

—(with inputs from Swatee Kher)

kavitha.iyer@expressindia.com

[Bombay Boy]

Making of the sea link: An exhibition centre for someday motorists

Lots of info on the technology & some trivia: the weight of the sea link equals that of 50,000 African elephants, its length is 63 Qutab Minars end to end

Kavitha Iyer

Mumbai, January 16: LONG before Mumbai’s motorists can take that seven-minute ride from Bandra to Worli, an utterly gripping half-hour tour beckons: Spread across 2,000 sq ft, at the Bandra sea link construction site, is an exhibition centre where Mumbaiites can begin to feel proud of their biggest engineering marvel yet.

From wall montages to miniature models, from plasma screens to little factoids, this chic brainchild of sea link contractor Hindustan Construction Company (HCC) has been almost a year in the making. With trial visits on, no less than Amitabh Bachchan was given a guided tour recently. “It’s fascinating,” he says to a web camera recording visitors’ comments.

There are three 32-inch LCD televisions and one 42-inch plasma screen playing short films on HCC’s various mega-projects, detailing how the horizon-altering cable-stayed bridge will be erected, how the foundations were laid underwater. A series of wall panels do a clever combination of actual photographs and imaging, showing what the seascape will look like in 2008. There’s serious number-crunching too—how many vehicles jam the narrow Mahim Causeway, how many traffic signals will be reduced by the sea link and traffic projections.

Visitors with a taste for technical minutiae, like engineering students, can have an HCC engineer chaperoning: And they’ll find that the engineers—top of the crop, some poached from other infrastructure majors—have spent hours on design software RM Space Frame 2006. “For a decision on the smallest measurement, we’ve sometimes waited eight hours for the fastest computers to execute one command—that’s the kind of data to be processed,” says an HCC spokesperson.

In an egg-shaped portion where you can feel like a pedestrian on the sea link are four touch-screen computers with Google Earth letting you tap your way to a view of Bandra and Worli. There are models of the launching truss, which took almost a year to customise, fabricate in iron and steel and erect at location. At 1,260 tonnes, this mammoth equipment necessitated the visit of giant marine crane Asian Hercules when it had to be lifted from one end to another. There’s information on other unique equipment too—a vibrohammer, an RCD drill bit with diamond tips for drilling into rock, for example.

And everywhere, trivia: the weight of the sea link equals that of 50,000 African elephants, its length is 63 Qutab Minars lying end to end.

At a clear glass window, a 1,200mm focal length telescope and binoculars let you watch the continuing construction. You’ve seen workers before. Now, watch in awe and deference.

Look Out For
* A foot-long piece of a steel wire, not for the feeble-wristed: These stress-relieved high tensile galvanized steel wires are only 7 mm thick, but have improved mechanical properties. After all, these slender wires are bunched together in varying sequences to form 264 cables that will hold up the 125-metre high cable-stayed bridge. Another factoid: Line up all the steel wires and there’s enough to go around the earth’s circumference.
* Models of pylons at the base of the cable-stayed bridge, a global first in pylon design: Each rounded pylon has a “double inclination”, tilting towards the centre from either direction. While double inclination pylons have been built, for example at Rion Antirion, Greece, the complex geometry here makes every millimetreof each leg vary from the next.
* Models of the 150-tonne precast concrete segments: The bridge comprises 2,353 such segments, each one varying slightly and with an identification mark defining its exact location in the bridge. Segments to be laid in June and July are already waiting in HCC’s casting yard, where they’re stacked in three tiers. Their combined weight required the soil to be specially strengthened, with moorum and wet mix macadam spread in layers and compacted.

(Entry is through prior requests and invitation. Contact HCC at 25775959.)

[Bombay Boy]

fucking ridiculous prices, 900 crores for less than an acre. people have seriously gone mad. also wonder how much of the money will be put back into the city network, or will it go into the railways black-hole

Rly plot at CST fetches 903 cr for budget hotel

Devraj Dasgupta | TNN

Mumbai: The Indian Railways hit pay dirt on Thursday when its 3,900 square metre plot (less than one acre) near CST in south Mumbai fetched Rs 903 crore. This winning bid to build and operate a budget hotel on a 30-year lease came from a consortium of Essel Group company G L Hotels Ltd and Pan Indian Hotels Ltd, the Indian franchisee of the Inter Continental hotel chain.
The consortium beat five competitors when bids were opened at the Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) office in New Delhi on Thursday.
Real estate sources say it’s yet another instance of the mad rush to snap up land in the city at mind-boggling prices. To put the deal into perspective, Mukesh Ambani’s RIL had paid Rs 1,104 crore for an 18.5-acre plot at the Bandra-Kurla complex last year.

70% of budget hotel rooms to be charged at market rates


Mumbai: Those who were in the race to buy the railways’ less-than-1-acre-plot near CST on lease were Indian Hotels (Taj Group), Delhi-based Zoom Royal Orchid, Signet Hotels run by a group of NRIs, Bangalore-based MRMGF-Aqua and Hyderabad-based Shree Shakti Hotels and Resorts.
According to railway officials who spoke to TOI, the winning bid is a “bombshell’’ of an offer and such a high price was least expected for the plot. Interestingly, the second highest bid lagged way behind at Rs 476 crore.
The Rs 903 crore bid includes a licence fee of Rs 866 crore and fixed use charges of Rs 37 crore to be paid to the Indian Railways over a period of 30 years. “On an average, the consortium will have to pay the railways Rs 30 crore per year,’’ sources said.
The land will be given to the consortium on a build, operate and transfer (BOT) basis. Property market sources say the location is ideal for a budget hotel because of its proximity to the city’s largest railway station, which sees 70,000 outstation passengers passing through its gates.
Railway officials said that 30% of the rooms in the new hotel will be priced on par with railway retiring rooms while the remaining 70% will be charged at market rates.
Although, the bidders had initially insisted on a 50-year lease for a better rate of return, the railway ministry stuck to its tender condition of 30 years on a BOT agreement. The consortium will have to hand over the hotel to the railways after the lease is over. The hotel will come up on the land currently housing the Railway Claims Tribunal. The RCT will be soon be demolished to make way for the hotel.
R D Sharma, group general manager of IRCTC (West), while confirming the Carnac Bunder deal, said the railways expects to have four more budget hotels at Mumbai Central, Bandra Terminus, Kurla and CST. Officials said the hotel will have two entrances, one facing P D’Mello road and the other one leading to CST station, said IRCTC officials.

[Bombay Boy]

works out to rupees 2.3 million per sq/m for undelevoped land. or $51,500 per sq/m. i dont know if these numbers are right. this is taking prices in bombay up by an order of magnitude

[Jai]

From Jan '07 Construction World magazine:

[Suncity]

Some info about Chattan.

http://ia.rediff.com/money/2007/jan/20spec3.htm

Standing tall at 36 storeys, the building on the old Chattan Bungalow site at Altamount Road, being developed by K Raheja Universal, will blow your mind. The first 12 stories offer just amenities. The remaining 24 storeys have 12 duplex apartments stacked on top of each other. Each apartment has its own huge terrace and an elevator to take the car right up to the living room. The whole building itself is on a hill, enhancing the view.

[Suncity]

Morgan Stanley invests Rs 675cr (US$152 million) in Oberoi Constructions

http://www.moneycontrol.com/india/ne...article/262559

Morgan Stanley Real Estate has announced that it has invested Rs. 675 Crores (approximately US$152 million) in Oberoi Constructions, a leading Indian real estate developer, focusing on residential, commercial, retail and hospitality projects.

[Jai]

MPE has this cool looking tower coming up at Borivali (West), of 40 stories + podium + stilt




Any ideas on this one?

[Jai]

Originally Posted by Suncity

Some info about Chattan.

http://ia.rediff.com/money/2007/jan/20spec3.htm

Cool news Sun. K Raheja Universal is one of the real estate development companies whose new projects I'm really looking forward to see this year.

In an interview with Realty Plus magazine, the Managing Director mentioned that they will inaugurate a buttload of new projects this year.

Currently we have around five million sq. ft. under development across Mumbai, comprising of luxurious residential towers/complexes, commercial buildings, IT Parks and shopping complexes. Value-wise, this is very high, keeping in mind Mumbai’s capital value...

We are gearing up to initiate another 12 million sq. ft. of real estate in 2007.

So in other words, they will double their presence in Mumbai alone, and in the article it's mentioned that they'll do another 10 million sq. ft. in other Indian cities.

In addition to all the residential projects, we also have thier "signiature office tower", Raheja One, to look forward to.

[Hindustani]

Jai

Thats a good rendering. hopfully, 40F towers becomes a norm for Bombay in near future.

[Jai]

Awesome Sun.. thanks for uploading the large render

Looks about 46-47 stories, with podium et al

[dreadathecontrols]

its all happening, as mumbai enters the 21st C
& thanks for wicked panos in mumbai cityscapes.Im in the land of economic dragon - though not shanghai - from next week so will be an intertesting comparison for me.

[Jai]

Looks like we're in for some cool towers in the near future...DNA India has this storey on what 2007 will be for Mumbai:

2007 -- Year of Super Luxury Construction

Mumbaikars need to get set for elite building projects in 2007. Elegantly designed, they will offer spacious flats with fantastic views and luxurious amenities.


Nothing succeeds like success, especially where Mumbai's real estate is concerned. Every new project being launched is more upscale and premium than its predecessor. The concept of 'bigger and better' met with an overwhelming response in 2006 and now, the stage is set for elegantly designed, elite projects offering spacious flats with fantastic views and luxurious amenities in 2007.

Exceeding expectations appears to be the common theme where new appartment concepts are concerned and with good reason

...

Due to the limited availability of luxury projects in prime South Mumbai locations, several suburban areas are emerging as attractive options. Powai already enjoys a phenomenal positioning that puts it practically on par with Worli Seaface. Bandra-Kurla Complex witnessed the launch of its first high-end premium residential project.

Full article here:


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[Jai]

Why we lost our mills

Rajshri Mehta
Saturday, January 20, 2007 00:42 IST

Darryl D’Monte stresses on higher FSI and better planning.

MUMBAI: Land has to be more liberally utilised if the city has to cater to the housing needs of its bludgeoning population, Sanjay Ubale, secretary (special projects) said at the launch of Mills for Sale: The way ahead, a book edited by social activist Darryl D’Monte, on Friday.

“Low FSI is anti poor,” said Ubale, advocating the need for higher floor space index (FSI). “A rethink is needed to raise the FSI levels as it is a way to develop houses.” A compilation of essays by architects, planners, activists intimately connected with the mill redevelopment issue, Mills for Sale… details how the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to plan 600 acres of defunct textile mill land was lost.

D’Monte said, “The book will serve as a reminder of what the city has lost and what needs to be done to avoid such blunders in future. It is also to point to the alternatives that still exist and what implications there are for other large derelict industrial sites.’’ Former municipal commissioner and social activist Jamshed Kanga said, “Lack of proper planning caused this problem. All decisions were taken in an ad-hoc manner in favour of builders. The MMRDA has forgotten that it is a planning body and now operates like a road building agency.’’

Structural engineer and civic activist Shirish Patel said that the city has the highest population density occupying per gross hectare of land. Eminent Architect Charles Correa asked for east-west corridors to be developed.

[VaastuShastra]

I wonder how much damage low FSI has already done?

Id hate to think that so much has already been built in the confines of old policy, that the cities are already handicapped.

[Cov Boy]

Hope the authorities learn from this.

Mumbai lost a golden opportunity to redevelop itself last year with all the mill sales.

The key is better planning and projecting way into the future. Mumbai needs a masterplan for the next 30 years or so to help plan its growth and rid the city of the slums or it never will.

Things to look forward to are:

A modern, efficient and bigger int. airport.
More housing
More department stores
Better roads
Bandra Worli Sea Link
Mumbai Metro
Better sewerage and drainage system
taller buildings

But needs:

Corporate Towers
Integrated Transport system
Spruce & maintain tourist attractions

to name but a few