Mangaluru: The move to re-construct the old Central Market building in the heart of the city has taken another leap with the Board of Mangaluru Smart City Ltd., the company floated for implementing projects under Smart City Mission, giving approval to it.

The board approved it in its meeting on Wednesday. Now, bids would be invited to take up the project under public private participation (PPP) model within a week, Mohammed Nazir, Managing Director of the company and also Commissioner of Mangaluru City Corporation, said.

The project estimated at about ₹ 145 crore would come up on 3.61 acres of land. The area includes the nearby meat market building too. There are about 450 traders now in the two market buildings. They would be rehabilitated on 1.65 acres of land earlier reserved for street vendors, behind the football grounds, as the vendors have refused to move to the place reserved for them. The rehabilitation would cost about ₹ 5.82 crore. This is responsibility of the bidder who takes up the project, he said.

He said that parking space for vehicles would be provided on two floors in the new project. It would be a complete green building with provision to tap solar energy and harvest rainwater. In addition, there would be a bio-digester and cold storage facility.

The project would have provision for shops to sell vegetables, fruits, meat and fish in the same building, he said.

When V. Ponnuraj, now district in-charge secretary as well as chairman of Mangaluru Smart City Ltd., was the Deputy Commissioner of Dakshina Kannada, he had proposed the idea of shifting the wholesale vegetable, fruit business from the Central Market tentatively to Adyar, on the outskirts of the city. It was to reduce heavy traffic in the central business district area.

As no consensus was arrived at, the proposal did not move forward.
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Now, with a modern market slated to come up in the same area, traffic woes are likely to aggravate further. It is yet to be seen whether the traders who would be rehabilitated would return to the modern market complex by paying high rent to be fixed by the corporation.

A councillor did not rule out the possibility of the area behind the football ground becoming another market area if the traders rehabilitated did not shift to the new market building.