Coimbatore back on track as retail market booms

Coimbatore is a growing market in residential and retail space.

After a spell of recession through the 1990s, Coimbatore is getting back on track.

The end of the textiles quota regime under the Multi-Fibre Agreement, the promise shown by the Information Technology (IT) sector, rising exports and the jump in the number of BPO (business process outsourcing) centres in the city have all helped the real estate boom in the city. Now land prices in the city have stabilised after about 125-150 per cent growth over the last two years.

Residential development is still booming in the city, says Srinivas Anikipatti, regional director, Colliers International.

There is a shortfall of at least 15,000 apartments in the city, of which some are under the planning and development stages. There is shortage of hotel rooms too. Taj is planning to develop a new business hotel in Coimbatore while there is news that Hyatt and DLF are also scouting for properties here.

Just 20 km x 25 km in size, this small city has been an industrial hub for a long time now and offers quality manpower and educational institutions.

Wipro has bought land for its proposed campus at a south-west location of the city, according to Knight Frank India. TCS and Cognizant, which already have their training centres here, are planning to launch new facilities.

Also, the Tamil Nadu government has acquired land for the 1.2 million sq feet Tidel Park II, on the lines of the one in Chennai.

The Kumaraguru College of Technology, off Satyamangalam Road, has leased space within its campus to software major Cognizant Technology Solutions.

CTS has already taken about 40,000 sq ft of space here while medical transcription leader, Healthscribe India, has booked about 60,000 sq ft in the campus. According to Trammell Crow Meghraj, it is also building a 3 lakh sq ft IT facility just outside the college campus, exclusively for CTS.

Avinashi Road, which is the prime spine of the city, connecting it with the railway station and the airport, is seeing development in both commercial and residential sectors.

The Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu (ELCOT) too is working on an IT SEZ on 29 acres off Avinashi Road. There is talk of the Bannari Amman Group doing a hightech SEZ on 100 acres, again off Avinashi Road.

ETL Infrastructure Services’s IT Park on Avinashi Road over 14 acres will offer about 8 lakh sq ft of IT space. On the whole, the city is expected to get about 6 million sq ft of space over the next two years.

RESIDENTIAL DEVELOPMENTS
The concept of housing in Coimbatore has changed over the last few years. People in this industrial city now have high per capita income.

Many were already rich and, with IT coming in, more have joined the bandwagon. Coimbatore essentially has been a city of independent houses and villas but many are looking at apartments now.

And though apartments may be a fairly new concept in the city, a lot of projects have kickstarted here. The first apartment project was done by the Rahejas in the early 1990s on Race Course Road, though more have started to enter the market lately.

Today there are countless small and big apartment projects in the pipeline, and people are actually buying them. In upmarket locations like Race Course Road, there has been a perceptible trend of redeveloping the bungalows to apartment-style developments.

According to Knight Frank estimates, approximately 3,000 residential units are under construction. Of these, about 50 housing projects are being done by the organised players in Coimbatore.

In the next few years, Avinashi Road will be the new residential hub as well, with a majority of the projects located here. Trichy Road and Mettupalayam Road are other areas where developers hold land at the moment.

There are smaller developers like Srivatsa Real Estates who have developed villas, row houses and apartments over 20 on Mettupalayam Road. Sri Ram Properties too has plans for 33 villas and 128 apartments on 10 acres off Avinashi Road.

Apart from smaller players, big developers too have converged in Coimbatore. Emaar-MGF and DLF have bought land in the city while L&T has 100-plus acres of land here. Then there are the Puravankaras, MetroCorp-Jurong, Sahara Homes, Renga Constructions, Shriram Properties, Rahejas, Ceebros, Arihant and Khivraj.

Though posh locations of the city are R S Puram, Saibaba Colony and Race Course Road, the real estate face of Coimbatore is in areas in and around the L&T Bypass, Trichy Road and Avinashi Road. Some of the bigger players also have plans for large integrated developments.

The MetroCorp-Jurong combine is working on two large integrated townships — Monte Vista on 40 acres on Sundaka Muthu Road and Know-ledge City on 350 acres on L&T Bypass Road. Monte Vista will include 3,000 two- and three-bedroom apartments, an IT Park on 15 acres, a large hospital, a shopping mall and a club.

Apartment sizes there will be below 1,500 sq ft. Deepak Krishnappa, chairman and CEO, MetroCorp Housing Corporation, informs that the Monte Vista projects caters to the value-for-money segment.

Knowledge City, which is a ramped up version of Monte Vista, will see — apart from apartments — duplex villas, and town homes, some high end luxury apartments, villas and homes with sizes ranging from anywhere between 1,200 to 8,000 sq ft of built space.

The 350 acres will also see a hotel, a convention centre, a shopping mall and a world class hospital.

Ashish Puravankara, managing director of Puravankara Projects, says since Coimbatore residents are vaastu-sensitive, most vaastu aspects will be incorporated into their apartment complex project on 17.5 acres of land.

The project under planning is expected to have 1,116 apartments of upto eight-storey complexes. “Our focus is on large townships,” explains Krishnappa.

Sahara City Homes is also in Coimbatore and is located at the National Highway — NH 209, Sathy Road, Sarvanampatthy. Spread over 113 acres, it will have a Sahara Mini Hospital with telemedicine, premium education facilities, shopping mall and multiplex, a hotel and a club.

THE RETAIL SECTOR
As is the trend across India, no growing city can live without its ample retail spaces. Coimbatore too is seeing a number of new malls being developed.

According to Knight Frank, around five malls with a built up area of approximately 2 million sq ft will be operational in the next 2-3 years. Zee’s Essel Group has acquired land at Peelamedu, Avinashi Road to develop a retail mall called Forum with a multiplex and food and entertainment centre.

Brookefields Developers are developing a 3,00,000 sq ft mall on the erstwhile Brook Bond Factory land on Krishnaswamy Road which will be operational sometime in 2007.

The Surat-based Daga Brothers have a plan for a mall on Avinashi Road while E-city Ventures has plans to develop a multiplex on 3.5 acres along the Coimbatore-Tirupur Link Road.