India Real Estate Monitor

Larsen & Toubro is planning develop nine million square feet at Bombay Dyeing & Manufacturing Company’s Textile Mills and Spring Mills complexes at Worli and Wadala at a cost of Rs two thousand crore.
Mr K.V. Rangaswami, Director and President (Construction), L&T, said that it would be an all-commercial project, comprising retail, IT and hospitality space, with no residential component in it.
The built-up area at Worli would be about 44 lakh square feet with 13 lakh square feet of IT space and a hotel of about six lakh square feet. The Wadala development would be of 53 lakh square feet, having 20 lakh square feet for IT, besides six lakh square feet for hospitality.
Brushing aside any presumptions that L&T was increasing its focus on realty projects, Mr Rangaswami said that the project exposure to infrastructure and construction for L&T’s ECC division was identical, at about 30 % each. He added “Even in airports, a major portion of the work is building the terminal”.
In response to queries, Ms Carolina Bajaj, the Bombay Dyeing spokesperson, said, “Bombay Dyeing has entered into a framework construction and building contract with L&T to construct mixed-use developments at Spring Mills, Dadar and Textile Mills, Worli. Considered the best construction company in India, we are confident that L&T will deliver an international quality of buildings in line with our building programme braced over a period of three to four years.”
Mr Anand J. Gupta, General Secretary of the Builders Association of India, said that any addition of floor space in Mumbai was welcome. However, despite the size of the commercial venture, it would have no significant bearing on the market as over five crore square feet were being built annually in Mumbai.