Roadside parking in the New Market area will be banned to ensure that the hi-tech parking plaza under Lindsay Street — to be unveiled on Friday — becomes financially viable, the civic body has announced.

The Calcutta Municipal Corporation (CMC) has drawn on the experience of the Rawdon Street Parkomat, the first such automated facility in the city, which took as long as two years to become self-sustainable just because roadside parking could not be stopped.

The civic body is also bound by an agreement with its private partner in the Lindsay Street scheme, Simplex Projects Ltd, to ban roadside parking within 500 metres of the plaza, once it is thrown open.

Officials said visitors to the civic headquarters, on SN Banerjee Road, will not be allowed to park their cars in the Corporation Place from Monday. The ban on “fee parking” will gradually extend to Grant Street, Chowringhee Place, Hogg Street, Fenwick Bazar Street and Free School Street.

“The Lindsay Street plaza can accommodate 281 cars (241 for now), which is not less than the number of vehicles parked along roads in the adjacent areas. So, I feel there is no need for continuing with roadside parking once the underground facility is commissioned,” said mayor Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharyya.

Municipal commissioner Alapan Bandyopadhyay has directed the civic estate department not to allot any more fee-parking spaces in the area.

Officials said revenue-sharing between the CMC and the private partner will “more than compensate” the civic body’s loss consequent to the ban on roadside parking. According to the agreement, 10 per cent of the revenue to be generated by the plaza will flow into the civic coffers.

Besides, the CMC will earn an annual revenue of Rs 84 lakh from the 250 stalls in the commercial complex.

The agreement for the project was inked in 2003, during the tenure of Subrata Mukherjee (Trinamul Congress) as mayor.