Prime plots in the city are increasingly attracting big money, and the interested parties include investors of every hue. Thus while the 7-acre plot off EM Bypass between ITC Sonar Bangla and Silver Springs will see another hotel coming up soon, the Park Circus market is Reliance’s for effecting a total makeover.
Analysts in other cities, who have very little clue as to what Kolkata is about except preconceived notions of backwardness and anarchy on the streets, are completely at sea as to how could the city realty claim such huge premium.
They are missing the point that Kolkata has a glorious past, and only in the intervening 2 decades the city was a morass that everyone avoided. I still remember my college days in late 70s in Dhanbad, when during long vacations my friends would refuse to go to their homes (including Delhi) and instead come to Kolkata (Calcutta then) simply because there was just no ‘life’ there compared to Kolkata.
In the last 2 decades or so when Kolkata was gradually relapsing into a city of past, there were others with the exception of Mumbai and Delhi, which were small, sleepy metropolis that sprang up mainly on the back of burgeoning IT industry.
Unfortunately for them, a great city is not only about an industry or 2, some silky flyovers, and/or some swanky malls here and there. It takes much, much more than that to be reckoned as a sea of humanity from every walk of life, as a melting pot of cultures as diverse as chalk from cheese.
It’s the people and their defining moments that make the difference to a city, and Kolkata doesn’t lack in that unlike others.
It’s therefore no wonder that the first sign of development has seen realty prices skyrocketing in the city. The Fort Group from the city has recently bagged a prime 6-acre plot in Ultadanga beside the office of DVC. Their bid was for Rs.75 crore, way ahead the next lower bid of Rs.57 crore.
The plot is well located, and the Fort Group will build a large mall, a multiplex and some flats for the erstwhile owner, the KMDA.
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