Senior government officials said that an FSI of 4 may not make it commercially feasible for a developer of a cluster redevelopment plan, especially with over half of the 16,000-odd cessed buildings already having consumed FSI of 4.
“Our endeavour is to make 33(9) beneficial not only to the tenants but also the landlords who own the plot and without whose no-objection a dilapidated building cannot be redeveloped. Now, if the entire FSI is utilised in rehabilitating the existing tenants in 300 sq ft, the developer will not be able to recover his cost as he also has to share some FSI with the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (Mhada), said Gautam Chatterjee, Mhada vice president.
As per a Mhada survey, 3,711 buildings currently avail of an FSI up to 1.33, 4,000 buildings avail an FSI between 1.33 to 2, 4,278 buildings avail a FSI between 3 to 4 and 4,300 buildings avail an FSI of over 4. To look into the possibility of giving a higher FSI, the government will set up a committee of senior officers, urban planning experts under TC Benjamin, urban development secretary, to look into ways to incentivise cluster redevelopment schemes.
Apart from higher FSI, other incentives that would be discussed could be to reduce property tax on new rehab buildings, higher share than the 300 sq ft currently given to landlords, said UPS Madan, who heads the Mumbai Transformation Support Unit (MTSU), a think-tank body set up by the government to implement its vision to make Mumbai into a world-class city.
While I do not know whether the idea is feasible, the cluster approach raises many questions. What should be the approach if tenants of a building in a cluster scheme have granted their irrevocable consent to another developer? Or tenants in a particular plot do not give their consent. But as it is a big layout and the developer has 70% of tenants from others, should he be granted development permission, said a senior official. The first meeting to be held on September 22 is to debate all this issues.