Space-starved Mumbai may get 100-acre park

Shiv Kumar

Tribune News Service

Mumbai, February 12

Residents of space-starved Mumbai may get a gigantic 100-acre park with amusement arcades, promenades, cycling tracks and museums, if a plan to develop the land owned by the Mumbai Port Trust (MbPT) gets the green signal from the state and Central governments.

Sources in the MbPT said the entire 11-km seafront on the eastern part of Mumbai would be redeveloped on the lines of Miami in the US. Already, a cruise terminal has begun operations and a marina and a jetty that will offer ferry services along the city’s coastline are on the anvil.

Sanjay Bhatia, chairman, MbPt, says his organisation is working with the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation to clear up the access roads so that people will be able to drive to the eastern seafront without much hassle. “While some of the roads will be reserved for fisherfolk and cargo handling, much of the road infrastructure will be opened up for the public,” Bhatia said.

At present, Mumbai’s eastern seafront is walled in behind the arterial P D’Mello road which passes alongside. Heritage experts say there is plenty of historically important artefacts behind these walls that date back to the British era when Mumbai’s natural harbour was put to use. Recently the port trust and the Central Railway, which originally linked the Mumbai port to the rest of the country, swapped land parcels so that both organisations could get contiguous holdings for their respective development activities.