Singapore firm to design Bhubaneswar Town Centre

Bhubaneswar: Singapore-based Surbana Jurong has won the bid to design the ambitious Bhubaneswar Town Centre (BTC) project in Odisha capital, which is going to be the first such transit oriented development (TOD) project in the country.

The proposed project to be built over 12 acres in Master Canteen area is being developed by Bhubaneswar Development Authority (BDA). 

The approved design will have contemporary and temple building architecture for which the city is known for.

As the project site shares its location with the city’s main railway station within the Bhubaneswar Town Centre Smart District, both East Coast Railways and Bhubaneswar Smart City Limited will be important stakeholders to be involved and consulted throughout the course of this project implementation.

The BTC project will primarily have elements like theatre plaza, retail and malls, nature plaza, landscape, town plaza, art plaza, experience plaza and children’s plaza. 

“This will also have food courts, service apartments, pedestrianised streets along with dedicated pedestrian and cycling paths and the entire project would have an interactive  as well as innovative environment,” said additional commissioner-cum-member enforcement, BDA, Bhabani Shankar Chayani.

The multi-modal transit hub will include railway station, bus terminal, multi-level car parking, pedestrian plaza, convention centre, performance plaza, kids play area, art gallery, bicycle and pedestrian bridge, office building and last but not the least dedicated pick up and drop off lanes for taxi aggregators and auto-rickshaws.

December 2016, the Odisha government had advised BDA to create a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) for the implementation of the Railway Station Multi-modal Hub Project in Bhubaneswar titled- “the Bhubaneswar Town Centre Project.”

 This Special Purpose Vehicle is a 100 per cent subsidiary of BDA and will serve as a dedicated agency to ensure successful implementation of the project in the next five years.