Marcus Square, one of the largest open and green spaces in the city, on Madan Mohan Burman Street, will soon turn into a marketplace. The Calcutta Municipal Corporation (CMC) intends to offer temporary relocation there to stall-owners of College Street market during its renovation.

“We are taking up a project to rebuild College Street market into a multi-storeyed shopping mall, with all the facilities of a modern commercial complex, including parking facilities,” declared mayor Subrata Mukherjee on Monday.

The renovated market will come up on a build-operate- transfer basis as a joint venture with private entrepreneurs, the mayor added.

The College Street market project will be the CMC’s first in rebuilding a new structure by demolishing an old one built during the Raj.

College Street market stands on seven bighas and houses more than 1,200 stall-owners and vendors.

“The stall-owners and vendors will have to be given alternative accommodation to ply their trade because it will take at least two years to reconstruct College Street market, even on a turn-key basis,” mayor Mukherjee explained.

The 16.5-bigha Marcus Square is the nearest location where the stall-owners can be given temporary rehabilitation.

According to mayoral council member (markets) Samsuzzaman Ansari, there is enough scope for generation of space in the rebuilt College Street market, which may attract private parties to the scheme.

College Street market is basically a single-storeyed structure, though some sections are two storeys high.

Since the market is not a heritage structure, the civic authorities have decided to demolish it and erect a new edifice.

Following the mayor’s decision to utilise Marcus Square as the temporary rehabilitation spot for stall-owners of College Street market, the CMC’s parks and squares wing has deferred its programme to line the green patch with fruit trees.

“Beautification of Marcus Square, the largest civic square in the city, will be taken up after the completion of the market reconstruction project,” said the mayor.

“Like almost all the other 23 civic markets, College Street market, too, has been a problem child for the CMC. We have to spend over Rs 3 crore a year to maintain these markets,” mayor Mukherjee said.

When Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamul Congress came to power in the CMC board, the annual revenue from College Street market was only Rs 22 lakh, while the annual expenditure on the market was about Rs 80 lakh.