Esplanade Mansion can be restored, will cost Rs 100 crore for 50-year lease of life, Bombay high court told

MUMBAI: In a piece of good news for the survival of Esplanade Mansion, a heritage building at Kalaghoda, an expert panel appointed by the Bombay high court has recommended repairs and restoration, not demolition. The recommendations have come in two separate reports. Last year, an IIT Bombay report had suggested demolition.

But restoration won’t be cheap, with two of the experts putting an estimate of around Rs 100 crore. The work, if done, can take three years, and will increase the building’s life by 50 years, said a third expert.

The 150-year-old structure is the oldest surviving cast iron building in India and is a rarity even abroad. Constructed as Watson’s Esplanade Hotel, its guests included Mark Twain and Tagore. Today, after decades of neglect and incidents like parts faling off, even its last use as a mundane commercial-cum-residential building has ceased, after all tenants were made to leave as the structure was declared dangerous by the state housing board.

The HC-appointed panel, appointed in December 2019 to study the feasibility of Esplanade Mansion’s restoration, submitted its two reports to a bench of Justices S J Kathawalla and B P Colabawalla on Monday. The court is hearing a bunch of matters, including one by the building’s current owner, Sadik Ali, for its restoration.

Conservation engineer Chetan Raikar, credited with CSMT’s restoration, submitted one report while heritage conservation architects Pankaj Joshi and Abha Lambah submitted the other, recommending restoration of the structure to its original glory, with wooden floors, a Victorian atrium and toughened glass. Lambah and Joshi recommended that the restored building could be reused as a public space. It could be an asset to the city and try for inclusion in the World Heritage List, they said.

Raikar, who conducted several on-site and lab tests, said, “Esplanade is not fully stable… due to excessive loading of additional slabs and mezzanine floors” and concluded that it “needs urgent repairs and strengthening of structural members to ensure stability”. “Esplanade... is a marvel of engineering creation,” he said.

“Its structural grid of cast iron columns is largely robust,” concluded Joshi and Lambah.

But what would be the cost of restoration? That is “tricky” said Raikar. “It would depend on further study of beam-columns, and factors like electrification, plumbing, elevators... Since no architectural use is finalized after restoration, it limits working out the cost,’’ he concluded. The other two experts estimated the cost at Rs 98 crore for the cast iron and superstructure conservation, besides additional costs, including consultation fees.

The Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) supports restoration and had filed a separate plea in the HC. On Monday, the bench gave Esplanade’s owner, the state housing authority and others a week to respond to the panel reports. Raikar was present in court.

Joshi and Lambah disagreed with the IIT experts who recommended demolition. “(Contrary to the IIT audit report) we find there is sufficient potential to repair, restore and protect this culturally significant building,” said their report, which though called for a “detailed structural assessment before undertaking repairs”.

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