Properties jostle with parking space

Properties jostle with parking space
The Times of India


Bangalore: The Forum mall earmarked nearly half of its total built-up space of 6.5 lakh sqft for parking. Phenomenal by most standards. Within months, however, the mall had to acquire extra land to add to the parking space. Today, even though it can accommodate 1,100 cars at one go, on some days, it has to turn away as many as 200.

This probably gives you an idea of Bangalore’s compounding parking problems. Vehicle ownership has reached such mind-boggling levels that tackling parking has become a big issue for property developers.

Newer properties, both commercial and residential, are now providing for greater parking space. But developers say more innovative solutions are needed if the issue has to be addressed once and for all.

RMZ Corp’s Christopher DaCosta says the company’s projects provide one car park space for every 650 sqft of habitable space, against the earlier norm of one for about 1,000 sqft.

Swaroop Anish, vice-president (business development) in the Prestige Group, says older buildings like Prestige Meridien on M.G. Road provided one car park space for roughly every 1,200 sqft. “Now, it’s one for 700 sqft. Earlier, in 2,000 sqft of space in a building, you would have one manager who owned a car. Today, in that same space, you have six managers, all owning cars. We have to provide for this increase.”

Residential complexes confront similar issues. With upper income families going for second and even third cars, and often very big ones, there is growing demand for more than one car park space from apartment buyers.

Sobha Developers recently launched, for the first time, a high-rise apartment project on stilts, providing for parking on the ground floor in addition to basement. “We intend to have this format in future projects,” says Jackbastian Nazareth, vice-president (sales & marketing). “As architects, families having several cars is becoming a constraint for us. We want to give large open spaces in our projects. But often, these become peripheral car parks over time.”

The problem is particularly acute in retail, where parking provision is essential to ensure adequate footfalls in stores. The Forum chief executive Suresh Singaravelu feels future mall projects will have to provide one car park for every 250 sqft, against the 1:350 in its mall at Koramangala.

Some like Retailers Association of India CEO Gibson Vedamani feels additional FSI (floor space index) should be provided for retail projects to create more parking space. But there are others who say this will only increase congestion. “Instead, the city administration should look at some global practices, like rooftop parking. This is allowed even in Mumbai, but not in Bangalore,” says one retail expert.