No incentives yet for preservation of heritage buildings

They bring alive the city's rich history, but old, fading heritage buildings are slowly losing out to swanky new skyscrapers and other projects, primarily because of lack of efforts to preserve them.

Most owners of heritage buildings would rather have them become dilapidated than maintain them. Chairman of Mumbai Heritage Conservation Committee (MHCC), V Ranganathan, said, "In most cases, individual owners allow the structure to decay, so that they can bring down the structure and redevelop it utilising the full buildable potential of the plot. The FSI also increases from 1.33 to 3.9 in such cases."

The government, too, prioritises redevelopment over conservation. Recently, chief minister Devendra Fadnavis told the state assembly that by March 31, the Heritage Review Committee led by former chief secretary Dinesh Afzalpurkar will be submitting a report on city pockets where the 'heritage' tag has affected many redevelopment projects.

The state government is yet to offer incentives to ensure preservation and maintenance of heritage structures in the city.

A proposal in this regard sent to the state urban development department by the Mumbai Heritage Conservation Committee (MHCC) about three years ago is gathering dust, like most other proposals. The MHCC had proposed that different incentives could be provided to heritage structure owners, which would motivate them to preserve their heritage structures.

The proposal sent by the MHCC to the state government stated that the owner of a heritage building should be given the difference between the present FSI of his/her building and the FSI potential of the plot as Transferrable Development Rights (TDR), over a period of time.

Over a period of time, it can be checked if the owners are actually maintaining their structures. The proposal also said that concessions on property tax should also be provided to the owners of such buildings.

Pankaj Joshi, executive director of Urban Design Research Institute, said, "In London and New York, individuals maintain their heritage structures so well, because they get incentives from the government. The government needs to understand that maintaining heritage structures is a social responsibility and not just an individual responsibility."

However, another senior civic official informed that in most heritage precincts, buildings have already consumed extra FSI. "In such a case, the incentive of getting an extra FSI or TDR wouldn't really matter to them, as maintaining heritage structures needs money," the official said.

"The need of the hour is to first come up with a list of which buildings/precincts should ideally be heritage. Then they should be classified into different categories, in terms of buildings belonging to BMC and other governmental bodies and those which are owned by private parties. A separate plan should be formulated for the private parties," the official said.

Afzalpurkar, too, admitted that not enough has been done to maintain heritage structures and feels that preservation or conservation of a structure requires a greater degree of quality maintenance than just repairs.

"Ideally, individual owners or organisations should be looking after them. I feel that the BMC should create a separate and a stronger executive arm of the MHCC, which will look only after the maintenance of heritage structures and periodically report to the MHCC, which is a policy-making body," said Afzalpurkar.

"The city's rich heritage should be preserved so that it is not denied to the posterity. Posterity, in fact, should draw inspiration and lessons from its heritage buildings," he said.

But with most conservation suggestions relegated to paper, will Mumbai's heritage buildings be available to posterity at all?