New Delhi, Sept 11 (KNN)  The Rail Land Development Authority (RLDA) has made an action plan to hasten the setting up of 75 multi-functional complexes (MFCs) this year, towards which it has invited bids in phases.
 
“Multi-Functional Complex project offers unique opportunity for retailers, hotel chain operators, developers and other such stakeholders for expanding and enlarging their footprint across hundreds of important towns and cities in the country,” said an official notification.
 
A statutory authority established by the Ministry of Railways for generating non-tariff revenue from railway lands, RLDA has so far invited nine bids in the current year for development of 43 MFCs in northern, western and southern India.
 
“Prominent stations are Dehradun, Ujjain, Vasai Road, Anand, Somnath, Lokmanya Tilak Terminus, Gulbarga, Vijayawada, Amritsar, Amethi and Chandigarh,” it said.
 
During the current year, 25 financial bids were received in the Western Railway.  The total present value of the lease premium and annual lease rent received for MFCs at eight stations is Rs 20.27 crore which has surpassed expectations RLDA from these sites, according to the notification.   

In its endeavour to develop MFCs in Andhra Pradesh, RLDA is holding a pre-bid conference at Hyderabad on September-12 to invite bids for commercial development of MFCs at eight stations in cities of tourist and religious interest in Andhra Pradesh, namely Dharmavaram, Karimnagar, Kurnool Town, Nellore, Nizamabad, Vijayawada, Zahirabad and Kacheguda.
 
“These eight centralised complexes will have the facilities for rail users such as shopping, food stalls/restaurants, book stalls, ATMs, medicines and variety stores, budget hotels, parking etc, it said. 
 
Prominent bidders and developers from retail and hotel chain industries have expressed interest in attending this pre-bid conference.

Real estate consultants like Knight Frank and JLL are advising RLDA in planning and marketing the MFCs sites. Several leading brands, retail, hotel chains and developers have expressed their interest in MFCs being developed by RLDA and prominent among them are Pantaloon, Café Coffee Day, The Loot, Woodland, Apodis Hospitality, Krishnan Palace Residency, WH Smith (Travel News Services).
 
Significantly, MFCs at 26 railway stations developed jointly with IrconISL and RITES have already been completed and are waiting to be leased out.  Prominent places among them are Haridwar, Udaipur, Raipur, Madurai, Allahabad, Jabalpur, Burdwan, Manmad, and Guntur.

Several other important sites for commercial development of surplus railway land including Bandra, Katra, Amritsar, Chennai, Vijayawada, Aurangabad, Vishakhapatnam and Bangalore are also soon going to be offered for bidding for leasing up to 30-45 years.
 
Attractively located in the respective cities, these sites are suitable for shopping malls, entertainment, offices, hotels and other such real estate developments.  RLDA seeks to earn more than Rs 1000 crore from these sites during the current financial year.

The Ministry of Railways has also asked RLDA to develop five railway stations at Chandigarh, Anand Vihar (Delhi), Bijwasan (Delhi), Habibganj (Bhopal) and Shivajinagar (Pune) into modern railway stations with excellent facilities for rail users.
 
This process will be implemented by the Indian Railway Stations Development Corporation Ltd., a joint venture company created by IRCON and RLDA.  The company has already started operations and Master Plans are under finalisation. These stations will be developed by leveraging the real estate and retail potential at the railway stations.  (KNN/ES)