John

This was once the centre of old Bombay — Girangaon. The town of mills, with its smoky chimneys and clattering looms. As the 1900s rolled in, its neighbourhoods — Parel, Lalbaug, Byculla — were the foundations of the old city’s prosperity and diversity, founts of culture and community. Then, in the 1970s, a prolonged textile strike sent the mill lands into terminal depression.

Today, Pranay Vakil, managing director of Knight Frank India, describes the old mill lands as globalising Mumbai’s new business district.

With Reliance Retail last week choosing to launch its first hypermarket in Lower Parel, the transformation of 600 acres of central Mumbai — from decaying suburb to a retail and residential district — within a decade just got its latest boost. In the last year, real-estate prices have risen by 30 to 40 per cent.

The chimneys are almost all gone. Giant cranes, hundreds of backhoe excavators and dump trucks and thousands of workers are working 24/7 creating Mumbai’s latest construction boom. Hundreds of bankers, diamond merchants and others who have prospered from globalisation are awaiting the completion of towering residential projects, malls and office blocks. For Mumbai’s construction magnates, it still isn’t enough. "Raise the floor space index and allow us to build more," said Architect Hafeez Contractor, who is designing the new look for Mumbai Textile Mill. Contractor argues that if more construction is allowed, the larger profits would allow builders to provide subsidised housing.

It’s not an argument many experts buy, and the municipal corporation announced on Monday that if mills did not hand over land to build housing for the mill workers who still live here, construction would be stopped in 24 mills.

That is just a giant drive to create Mumbai’s newest business and residential district.

News Source: hindustantimes.com