The land on Nathalal Parikh road adjacent to Electric House at Colaba where the Taj group's five star hotel is being built.

June 25: A proposed five star apartment hotel, the first of its kind in the country, to be constructed at Colaba by the Taj group, has drawn flak from citizens' groups and a local corporator who feel the land could have been used for public amenities.

The hotel is being built on a 10,000 square metre prime land on Nathalal Parikh road adjacent to Electric House. Work on the outer wall of the plot where the ambitious 200-room apartment hotel is to be built, is expected to be completed by 1999.

According to Shakoor Khan, general manager of the Taj group, ``The apartment hotel was being built for the 21st century.''An apartment hotel is designed for families and offers additional rooms like a kitchen and a living room.

``The hotel will be unique in its design and concept and will meet the needs of expatriate businessmen and their families,'' Khan said.

Earlier this year, the Indian Hotels Co. ltd. (owners of the Taj group) submitted updated plans for a hotel on the Wellington Mews estate in Colaba. First submitted by the hotel's architects in 1977, the plans were approved by the building proposals department of the BMC three years later.

The land was given to the Indian hotels on a 99 year lease in 1904 and was used to park their horse drawn carriages. The hotel paid an annual rent of Rs 9500. However, the current market value of the land is believed to be around Rs 1000 crore.

However, the project's detractors allege that the administration could have made better use of the prime land. ``We have no cemetery, no maternity home. Colaba has a solitary municipal school, and the BMC wants to give away its only plot in Colaba for a five star hotel,'' says agitated Congress corporator Puran Doshi of A ward.

Dr Navin Kumar, President of the Colaba Cuffe Parade Citizen's Group concurs with Doshi. ``Colaba has no government nursing or maternity home. Private nursing homes prove very expensive for the middle class people of the area, especially for difficult deliveries.'' The choice of location for the new hotel too has raise questions given that the group has two other five star hotels-- the Taj and the President-- in a one kilometre radius around the site.

But Shakoor Khan explains that this property ``owned by our company is the only available location in South Mumbai.''He also explained that the two existing hotels had to cope up with a tremendous rush during the season and had to refuse guests.

But Doshi is untouched by Taj's concerns. ``The corporation is buying land in the suburbs, so why is it gifting away prime land to five star hotels?'' he asks.

The hotel project also seems set for its share of criticism from local citizens groups in this largely residential area. ``Another five star hotel in Colaba means tremendous strain on the narrow roads in the area, traffic bottlenecks and chaos,'' warns Dr Navin Kumar, citing reasons why a proposed hoverport near the Gateway of India and a seven star floatel near Cuffe Parade were shot down.

The citizens group first opposed the project when the hotel proposed to commence construction in 1990. According to Dr Kumar, the area was already saturated with traffic thanks to three schools, a gymkhana and two other Taj five star hotels in the area. The Taj group was given a commencement certificate to work on the hotel way back in 1984.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.