BDD chawl redevelopment gets environment clearance

The Bombay Development Division (BDD) chawls redevelopment project is finally gathering steam. The Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (Mhada) has received environmental clearance for the ambitious BDD chawls redevelopment project in South Mumbai.

The century-old chawls are spread across 292 acres in Sewri, NM Joshi Marg, Worli and Naigaum in South Mumbai. Mhada Vice-Chairman Sambhaji Zende-Patil said on Tuesday that they recently received the environment clearance certificate from the State Expert Appraisal Committee (SEAC) constituted by the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest, and Climate Change (MoEFCC). The SEAC is headed by retired IAS officer Johny Joseph.

Zende-Patil described it is a "big achievement". "This ambitious project has been lingering for the past decade, but we have finally received the go-ahead. We have put our plans in place. We are happy that the redevelopment project will commence soon," Zende-Patil said.

The state government has allocated an floor space index (FSI) of 4, and tenants of these chawls will get 500 sq ft carpet area against the current area of 160-180 sq ft.

Zende-Patil said Mhada will get 7,000 housing units as saleable area. "The saleable area housing towers will extend up to 70 storeys, while the rehabilitation towers will be between 18 to 23 storeys. The size of the saleable area housing units will be 2 and 3 BHK, while the rehabilitation towers will have 2 BHK houses. The 7,000 additional houses will be sold by Mhada through lottery. This is a purely government project," he said.

On December 28, Mhada floated a tender for the redevelopment of 5,15,872.85 sq ft area at NM Joshi and 6,68,202.48 sq ft at Naigaon BBD chawl. As per the tender document, there will be 14 rehab towers at NM Joshi with 22 habitable floors, commercial shopping space on the ground floor, three basements, as well as a ground and podium parking. While in sale, there will be two ground-plus-57 storey residential towers at the same location.

In Naigaon, the tender says that Mhada wants to construct 20 ground-plus-27 storey residential towers, while in the salable component, there will be two towers that will be ground-plus-69 storeys. Besides, there will be a separate ground-plus-23 storey building for commercial establishments.

Mhada had asked the contractor firms to submit their technical and financial bids for these two area projects initially. The bid can be submitted by February 13, and it will open on February 14, 2017, says the document.

An SEAC official said they are concerned that the project in Worli and other areas will have a huge impact on traffic.

"We told SEAC that a traffic problem persists in Worli and its surrounding areas. To cope with the increasing traffic, we have decided to widen internal roads to ensure vehicular movement will not have much impact on traffic on outer roads. The tenants of the BDD chawls will be shifted to the government transit camps in South Mumbai. Once the first phase of the buildings are ready, residents will be relocated to the developed premises. We want to redevelop the area in the next six to seven years," a senior Mhada official said.