Soon, Mukesh Ambani, Ratan Tata will have homes on same road

Soon, Mukesh Ambani, Ratan Tata will have homes on same road
Tata’s bungalow is ready, Ambani’s172-m, 27-storey home will be ready by November 2008
Sayli Udas-Mankikar
Mumbai, june 3: South Mumbai’s Altamount Road, which boasts of the highest realty prices in the city and is home to many rich and famous, will now have the country’s top two industrialists—Mukesh Ambani and Ratan Tata—living just half a kilometre apart.

While Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani’s 27-storeyed home coming up along the central part of the road is no more a secret, the Tatas went about the construction of their bungalow and a seven-storeyed building at the dead end of the road in a hush-hush manner. In fact, the Tatas, BMC officials say, have already begun shifting to their new home while the Ambanis’ home-in-the-making ‘Antilia’ will not be completed before November 2008.

Antilia, named after a mythical island believed to be located in the west of Europe in the Atlantic Ocean, is designed “in direct response to unique programmatic elements and a desire to maximize the views around the site”, say Perkins+Will, the design architects in their website summary plan.

The building, the website explains, will be an “undulating ribbon, or snake frame”—one of its kind in Mumbai. “The vertical surfaces of the frame will be articulated with a steel lattice and contain a series of planter beds, effectively transforming the facades into living green walls that will filter light and enhance the local micro-climate of each level,” the website says.

“Antilia’s approved height is 172 metres, enough to build 40 storeys. But considering the plan Ambanis have submitted where each floor has a different height, the actual number of floors is lesser,” says a senior official at the Building Proposal Department of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, which okayed the plan in 2003.

The approved built-up area is 4,778.09 square metres (only for residential purposes) and the permissible built-up area is 4,939.81 square metres.

According to the approved plan, the official said, the building will have six floors for parking; several floors for gardens and two floors for a gym and a swimming pool each. Entertainment floors will house a 50-seat theatre while two floors have been set apart for guest apartments, the official said, adding that more than one floor has been dedicated for kitchen, laundry and other similar services.

The plan also proposes a helipad at the top of the building, but the BMC has not given its clearance for it.

Once the Ambanis—Mukesh, wife Nita, mother Kokilaben and the couple’s three children Akash, Isha and Anant—shift from their 18-storeyed house ‘Sea Wind’ at Cuffe Parade, they will occupy the top four floors of Antilia, giving them a spectacular view of the Arabian Sea and the city’s skyline.

On the other hand, the Tatas’ home is a comparatively simpler project. According to BMC officials, it comprises a 661-square metre bungalow and a seven-storeyed building, which were approved in May 2002.

This plot now owned by Ratan Tata was previously the legendary J R D Tata’s rented bungalow ‘The Cairn’, a palatial Scottish style bungalow with an outhouse and a garden measuring about 5,647 square yards. JRD and his wife Thelma lived here for over 50 years paying rent to the Bai Awabai F Petit Residuary Estate Trust till Tata Sons bought it for Rs 50 crore in 1999.

“The new bungalow, a ground-plus-one (two-storeyed) structure, is ready and the occupation certificate was handed over to the Tatas on April 12 though the exterior work of the building is still pending. We have been told that Ratan Tata has already started shifting to the premises,” said the BMC official.

According to sources, the other seven-storeyed building with a permissible built-up area of 4,721 square metres along with the proposed 2,433 square metres in the same compound will be used to house directors of the Tata group of companies.