Bhendi Bazaar makeover begins

The Bhendi Bazaar redevelopment project -- one of Mumbai's most ambitious attempts to reconfigure a crowded residential-commercial area to provide for better housing, improved business environment, wider roads and ample open spaces -- kicked off with demolition beginning on two buildings.
The project, the brainchild of the Saifee Burhani Upliftment Trust (SBUT), aims to move 3,500 families into 350-sqft apartments from their current smaller, dilapidated flats; create modern, better equipped spaces for 1,200 businesses; and free up nearly one-sixth of Bhendi Bazaar's 16.5 acre sprawl for open, recreational areas.
 The Rs 2,900-crore project, launched in 2009, could provide a blueprint for cluster redevelopment across the city and provide an ideal for how high-rises must not only aim at accommodating more and more people, but also help create more space on the ground.
The Bhendi Bazaar redevelopment will involve demolition of 249 four-to-six storied buildings and will impact the lives of close to 20 000 people. Care will be taken to retain existing religious structures and the township's centre piece will be the Raudat Tahera, the tomb of the previous Syedna, the current Bohra community leader Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin's father.
While Bhendi Bazaar today is just a maze of concrete, once the project is completed it will have over 700-odd trees, congestion-free roads and the city's longest shopping corridor.
Of the 249 buildings that would be demolished under the redevelopment plan, SBUT has already acquired 200. These will be replaced with a yet-unspecified number of towers, each averaging 40 stories. Sixteen such buildings will be sold in the open market to recover the project costs.
 Demolition work on the first two structures of the cluster, Mohammedi building and Ebrahim Nuruddin Chawl, began early on Monday morning. Nearly a dozen odd buildings have already been vacated and close to 400 residents have moved to a transit camp at Mazgaon.
The work on the redevelopment project was stalled for nearly three years as SBUT struggled to secure clearances from the BMC, MHADA and other state agencies and faced stiff resistance from residents not willing to leave their dwellings of years and move to a transit camp.
Things started moving a few months back when SBUT managed to get three major buildings vacated. The project has picked up pace since.
The redevelopment project has been divided into eight clusters.
Work on other seven clusters will not wait for the completion of the first phase.Work will start parallely.
In the next six to eight months, construction work on new buildings will also begin.
Built to decongest the Fort area in 1803, Bhendi Bazaar today is one of the most densely populated areas of south Mumbai. Nearly 70 per cent of the residents here are Bohri Muslims, a closely-knit business community.