Coming up, “eastern India’s first” garment park — that, too, beneath the approach to Vidyasagar Setu. The Rs 70-crore garment manufacturing, marketing and distribution hub, with a saleable area of 630,490 sq ft, is expected to be ready by Puja 2008.

The garment park by Hooghly River Bridge Commissioners (HRBC) will have modular workshop units, segregated man and material movement, and supporting facilities like design studio, business promotion centres, marketing office, exhibition spaces, eateries, parking zones for 408 cars, banks and loading-unloading bays.

Plot A will house a landscaped herbal garden, Plot B and C will have the core manufacturing and support facilities.

While organised retail is witnessing a boom, extensive outsourcing has opened the floodgates for the small-scale sector in this segment.

“The main objective of the garment park is to create more job opportunities in the small-scale sector,” says HRBC chairman Swadesh Chakrabortty.

From cutting and stitching to buttoning and labelling, the garment park will be equipped to handle it all, while the workers (a majority among them women) can avail of a bouquet of auxiliary facilities, like a working women’s hostel and creche, kindergarten and health centre.

“A garment park like this can play a crucial role in boosting local consumption and triggering a spurt in exports,” says B.S. Nagesh, managing director of Shoppers’ Stop Ltd. “And all big players are now looking at balancing manufacturing bases between India and China.”

The park, stresses Chakrabortty, is an effort to “assemble the unorganised garment business in and around Calcutta in a hygienic, eco-friendly work atmosphere”.

Uninterrupted power, adequate water supply, water for fire-fighting, storm water drainage system, sewer network and sewer treatment plant and solid waste management make up the basic infrastructure for the garment park.

“The high-speed roller-coaster along the multi-level viaducts of the imposing bridge snakes around the dramatic locale, begging the creation of an edifice worthy of the ambient grandeur. We hope the garment park can become contemporary Calcutta’s calling card to the apparel industry,” says architect Dulal Mukherjee.

The design solution provided by Dulal Mukherjee & Associates envisages green islands/pockets with peripheral greenscape, highlighted with sculptural built forms amidst the busy interchange.

HRBC, keen to use the greenscape meaningfully by creating a space of “immense socio-economic contribution”, hopes to break ground by February, 2007.

“The main constraints of the site are the irregular shape of the plot and the disorganised neighbouring urban fabric. But these are more than compensated by the sheer dynamism of the interchange — the speed and movement on the engineering marvel that is Vidyasagar Setu. We will stress on form and adopt a steel and dry construction technique for speed,” says architect Mukherjee.