New Town house owners will now be able to convert their ground floors into cafes by paying Rs 500 to the authorities.
The decision was taken by New Town Kolkata Development Authority on August 8 with a view to make the township livelier and safer, particularly for women.
“A large number of people working in the IT sector in New Town are women and they feel unsafe when they return home at night,” said Debashis Sen, chairman of New Town Kolkata Development Authority (NKDA). “This was one of the finds from a study by experts from IIT Kharagpur. We had engaged them last December to help us find what people feel about living and working in New Town.”
“An extension of this is to allow home owners to set up tea bars, cafes, fast food joints and ice cream parlours. They will act as local focal points where people will gather and hopefully will prevent the streets from getting deserted after dark,” said Sen.
Cheap and easy
According to Sen, house owners will have to pay NKDA Rs 500 as application fee for the conversion of their ground floor into shops. “Apart from this, they will need to pay Rs 100 for a trade licence fee per annum,” said Sen.
He is hopeful that the project will take off simply because of its simplicity and cost effectiveness. “Unlike in Salt Lake, here property owners won’t need to cough up much money to set up the shops,” said Sen.
In Salt Lake, ground floor shops have always been around but in 2010 the urban development department formally began allowing conversion. The rate is a recurring cost of Rs 80 per sq-ft but unlike in New Town, it only allows a portion of the floor to be used. While New Town allows only a handful of trades to be conducted, Salt Lake allows 65, ranging from restaurants to parlours.
Leading the way
Much of New Town wears a desolated look after 8pm. Areas around the Major Arterial Road such as the New Town bus stand, around the clock tower and the roads around the malls remain busy but the lanes and bylanes become deserted.
Housing and Infrastructure Development Corporation (Hidco) opened a glass front café near Chinar Park in July that stays open till midnight. There will be four more of these coming up soon — near Ecospace in Action Area II, near DLF IT Park and two more near Kolkata Gate. The cafes will serve tea, coffee, snacks and basic household items.
“Apart from acting as meeting places, the lights filtering out of these café's on the streets would make commuters feel safer and make the cafes appear friendlier,” said Sen, who is also the chairman cum managing director of Hidco.
Residentspeak
“A cake shop has recently opened in the ground floor of a house in our neighbourhood and we are happy,” says Brajendra Kumar Santra, a governing body member of ALAKAI (AL, AK and AI) Block cultural and welfare association. “We just hope these cafes don’t get too noisy or attract unnecessary crowd.”
Lakshmi Narayan Manna has been living in New Town’s BB Block for three years now but still has to head to malls for daily needs. “So I would appreciate mom-and-pop stores around the corner. Ours is a safe locality but more lights and people would be even better in the evenings,” he says.
But in a township where most residences are apartments and co-operatives, one wonders how many will be able to exploit NKDA’s offer. “AK and AL Blocks have most co-operative buildings with a parking lot in the ground floor along with a room and toilet for the caretaker. How will they make room for shops without any prior planning?” wonders Santra.
