Give up your land for parking lots: BBMP to Citizens

BENGALURU: Non-availability of land and scarce parking facilities in dense-traffic areas have led the city municipal corporation to come up with a novel idea: it has invited people to relinquish their land in the vicinity of bus stands, railway and metro stations for constructing parking lots.
The question, however, is: will there be takers?

The civic body has reached out to individuals and firms holding anywhere between two and five acres.The plan, apparently , is to construct technology-based parking facilities.With such land, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) is also keen on building a new road network to link localities that suffer from poor accessibility .

With Namma Metro phase-1 complete, authorities are under pressure to create infrastructure to supplement the city's latest mode of public transport.

As both projects involve land acquisition, the BBMP is counting on the state government's new transfer of development rights (TDR) policy to succeed. “All these years, we could not go ahead with land acquisition for infrastructure projects because the earlier TDR policy was unclear about several aspects. We are confident that the new TDR policy will work,“ Municipal Commissioner N Manjunath Prasad said.

TDR refers to the grant of additional built-up area to a landowner in return for the portion of a plot acquired for a public project. The new policy announced this March provides for grant of twice the area of notional land for every square metre of land acquired. Also, the additional built-up area is linked to the guidance (market) value. Since 2006, the civic body has issued development rights certificates (DRC) spanning 22.66 lakh sqm, of which about 11 lakh sqm have been utilised.

In fact, the civic body has proposed tax rebates for those who part with their land for public parking facilities.

But the TDR way may not work, according to urban evangelist V Ravichandar. “These land parcels are hugely valuable by virtue of their location. Also, the government will have to create a robust mechanism, including a willingness to buy TDRs that are needed for essential public infrastructure.“

Over 80% of the development rights issued to landowners have been transferred to real estate developers. The latter may not show interest now. “TDR pricing was purely market-driven. By linking it to the guidance value, we feel the pricing is as good as the prevailing or higher land value, which may not be viable to many developers,“ said Sanjay Shenoy , joint managing director at Legacy Global Projects. “The new policy also reduces setback relaxation making it unviable for smaller properties.“