Bhubaneswar for long has been on the fast track of real estate development with malls and apartments mushrooming everywhere. Only one luxury was missing-a multiplex.
The wait will soon be over with at least four multiplexes coming up in the capital city of Orissa. While a multiplex in Saheed Nagar will start by December this year, three others will come up at Gajapati Nagar, Kalarahanga and Paikarapur.
Construction work for Bhawani Mall, a public-private partnership project of the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation and Bhawani Constructions, at Saheed Nagar is nearing completion, BMC spokesperson Dilip Routrai said.
Bhawani Constructions Managing Director Ashok Lakhotia said the mall will have three screens, making it possible for nearly 1,000 viewers to watch films at the same time. To avoid pillars in core areas, they are using innovative technology, generally used in the construction of bridges over rivers.
The five-storey shopping, office, residential and cineplex structure is coming up on a 6 lakh square feet area. The commercial area in the multiplex will have three blocks. The BMC will rent the first block to corporate offices while the second block will house semi-corporate and mercantile segments. The multiplex, shopping mall and retail outlets will be in the third block.
The complex will have a 90-ft frontage for green cover. In the housing and commercial property, BMC has a 30 per cent share. The complex will have a 60,000 square feet basement parking and 45,000 square feet terrace parking.
Real estate developer Z Estate is coming up with a mall-cum-multiplex at Kalarahanga on Nandankanan Road. Confirming the Z Estate plan, Bhubaneswar Development Authority (BDA) planning member Prashant Patnaik said the developer has obtained BDA approval for the multiplex. Z estate plans to have an integrated residential and commercial complex.
The BDA has plans for a multiplex in the public-private mode. They have already invited tenders from developers for the integrated residential and commercial complex on 25.5 acres of land at Chandrasekharpur. “Details of the residential and commercial complex will be known after the project is finalized,” Patnaik said.
Another prominent builder is planning a multiplex over a three-acre area in Gajapati Nagar. The builder had bagged 12 acres from BDA and had wanted to pull out of the project in the wake of the 2008 recession. But after the government offered a bailout package, the builder is going ahead with one-fourth of the land with a commercial complex, which will house a cineplex.
Real estate developers say the city’s aspiration for a multiplex got delayed by at least two years because of the recession. “Many plans got shelved while others got delayed. Now, the projects are on revival path,” said D S Tripathy, president of the Confederation of Real Estate Developers’ Association of India.
Bhubaneswar has around eight good malls, most of which have come up in the past five years.
