Business hub takes shape in Bombay marshland
Business hub takes shape in Bombay marshland
By Madhu Nainan
BOMBAY (AFP): Bombay's dream of rivaling Hong Kong as a global business hub is taking shape on 100 hectares (247 acres) of reclaimed marshland at the center of the oblong-shaped metropolis.
The International Finance and Business Center (IFBC) in the Bandra-Kurla area of the port city, when completed, will be on par with the world's best business townships, its developers said.
The city within a city is the most ambitious government real estate project since India launched sweeping economic reforms in 1991, turning its back on 44 years of protectionism and opening the doors to foreign investors.
Devbrat Mehta, chief of the Bombay Metropolitan Regional Development Authority, said the IFBC would serve as the corporate capital for businesses attracted by reforms in India's huge market.
"We will soon be the prime location for international business," he said in an interview.
"Bombay is the ideal place for a global business and financial center," he said. "With Hong Kong going under Chinese rule in 1997, there will be no global business center between Tokyo and New York."
Work on the project started last year and is on schedule. The IFBC will be "fully operational" in about three years' time, Mehta said.
The project has sent real estate prices soaring in the Bandra- Kurla area, where office space sells now for 15,000 rupees (US $ 500) per square foot, up from 1,200 rupees ($ 40) in 1990.
It is cheap compared to Nariman Point, a tongue of land reclaimed from the Arabian Sea and converted into a concrete jungle which serves as the current Bombay corporate center.
Office space there rents for 22,000 rupees ($ 733) a square foot.
The IFBC will not be just another concrete and glass forest, Mehta stressed, adding that 3,000 residential apartments have also been planned.
"This is part of our new strategy not to segregate residential and business districts. We want the place to be used 24 hours. It should be lively throughout, unlike a purely business district," said Mehta.
He compared the development of the center to the redevelopment of Battery Park in New York or the London Docklands. "Land use will be planned scientifically as land is a very precious commodity in Bombay.
"We will have wide roads, flyovers, parking lots and a whole set of amenities, pedestrian plazas and shopping malls, fire brigade and ambulance services, schools, hospitals and health centers."
Dedicated power plants and state-of-the-art telecommunications facilities are planned for the complex to make it autonomous and reduce its reliance on creaking state-owned facilities.
The IFBC is being laid out just a few kilometers (miles) from Asia's largest slum, Dharavi.
It will be bound by the Mahim Nature park which is home to 60 species of migratory birds, by a wooded walkway along the Mithi river and by a mangrove swamp the developers will leave undisturbed, Mehta said.
Asia's largest convention center, with a seating capacity of 5,000, and a luxury hotel will be a part of the center, he said.
Major business enterprises such as the Unit Trust of India, the country's largest mutual fund, the Tata group and the Computer Maintenance Corp., have already booked premises at the IFBC.
India's first diamond bourse and the fully computerized National Stock Exchange are coming up at the site, where 300 companies have applied for space.
And Mehta hopes it will help decongest the chaotic Nariman Point. "Businesses wanting to expand would have to come here as there is no other place available in Bombay," he said.