South Point will shift from its current premises once its new building is ready. The school's second campus in Mukundapur, behind the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute, was unveiled by chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday.
The school currently operates out of Mandeville Gardens, where the junior wing is housed, and Ballygunge Place, the address for the high school, in the same neighbourhood.
The chief minister had announced the handover of a 4.2- acre plot when she attended the school's prize distribution ceremony in 2012. After a survey, the final plot the school is getting has come to measure 6.65 acres, with a built-up area of about five lakh square feet.
"We have long been facing space constraint and had approached the chief minister for land. Our current premises add up to 1.4 acres. She took personal initiative to make land available for us in record time. Both wings of the school will shift to the new campus," Harsh V. Lodha, chairman of the MP Birla Group and trustee of South Point Education Society, told Metro on the sidelines of the programme.
Planning for the new building will take another two months. "We will be happy if the structure is ready in three years," he said, when asked about a deadline. The second campus, named after Priyamvada Birla, wife of group founder M.P. Birla, will see an investment of Rs 185 crore.
Once the new campus is ready, the Ballygunge addresses will be used for higher education initiatives, Lodha added.
The MP Birla group is also launching a nursing school and college in Rajarhat.
The new building will have a classical look with modern interiors. "Our teachers do not want a glass-and-steel structure," the chairman smiled.
The building will have more than 250 classrooms (20 sections for each class), over 30 "sophisticated" labs and studios for fashion designing and commercial art.
There will be 25 students in each class at the nursery level and 46-50 in each section in the higher classes. The school, which figured in the Guinness Book of World Records between 1984 and 1992 for having the maximum of students in the world, has 12,500 students. The figure may go up to 15,000.
The news of the shift drew mixed responses from the former students who attended the programme. "School was a 15-minute walk from my Ballygunge home. No one can walk to the school once it moves to the new campus," said film editor Arghyakamal Mitra. "I will be relieved to see the crowd leave," chuckled economist and Mandeville Gardens resident Abhirup Sarkar, possibly voicing the sentiments of his neighbours too.
The chief minister lauded the school for maintaining a high standard and reiterated a suggestion to build a university. She also handed over scholarships on behalf of the school to 25 needy and meritorious students.
