Godrej, state to set up exhibition centre in city

MUMBAI: Mumbai will soon have its first industrial exhibition centre of international standards, with the Godrej group and the Maharashtra government coming together to fulfil a long-pending dream.

Spread over 100 acres, the proposed Rs 500-crore exhibition centre will come up at Vikhroli, top government sources told ET. The Godrej Group owns over 3,500 acres of land in this central suburb, along with the company’s manufacturing facility.

The state and the consumer major will soon float an SPV to make this project a reality, sources said. The Vilasrao Deshmukh cabinet recently cleared the plan, according to which the state will have cash-less equity in the SPV.

“Besides the land, the state will provide infrastructure facilities for the proposed centre. We will be mainly facilitators for the project,” government sources said.

According to a highly placed official, the plan was hanging fire for the last ten years due to a series of technical hitches, including the ownership of land. However, both the parties have now decided to settle the issue amicably for the speedy completion of the exhibition centre.

There was a long pending demand for Mumbai to have its own exhibition cum convention centre. “Other smaller places like Hyderabad, have taken the lead in creating world class exhibition centres. Mumbai desperately needs one,” an official said.

Though earlier, there were efforts to build such a centre, none have materialised so far. State owned corporations such as Mumbai Metropolitan Regional Development Authority (MMRDA) and Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation also have plans for such a centre.

The MMRDA has recently auctioned a plot of land of about 18.5 acres for building a convention and exhibition centre in the Bandra-Kurla area.

It plans to have exhibition space of 25,000 sq mt with 5 exhibition halls, convention auditorium with a capacity of 2,000, with simultaneous interpretation systems and state of the art audio-visual equipment, along with related support facilities.

“All these projects are in various stages of preparation, whereas Godrej and the state SPV are set to take off,” an official said.