Gurugram: Work on Global City may start in 2-3 months

GURUGRAM: Work on the first phase of Global City — a residential and commercial hub — is likely to start over the next two to three months. Officials in the Haryana State Industrial and Infrastructure Development Corporation (HSIIDC), which is executing the project, said the first phase would be developed by next year.

“The chief minister, who had recently reviewed the project, has instructed officials to put it on the fast track. The project would be developed in three phases, which have been decided on the basis of the sections of land provided for each. The planning for the first phase is done and we are finalising the tenders. We hope to start the work within the next two to three months and expect it to complete in a year,” said a senior HSIIDC official.

According to the official, the remaining two phases will also be ready in two to three years. “However, it may take up to 25 to 30 years for the area to be populated and occupied in keeping with its potential,” the official added.

Spread across 1,000 acres and with a development potential of around 125 million square feet, Global City is being billed as a “city within a city”. It will have a convention centre as well as an industrial zone and a residential hub.

In terms of civic infrastructure, Global City will have wide roads, cycle tracks and utility tunnels, officials said. These apart, it will be home to residential projects, retail stores, hospitality ventures, hospitals, and educational institutions. A tender document recently floated said the project “is expected to usher the economic development of the NCR-region into a newer direction”. The project, according to the document, will aim at creating “new-age service industries” with the help of artificial intelligence, augmented reality and fin-tech.

The land on which the project is coming up is part of an area that had been transferred to Reliance Industries in 2006 for the development of a special economic zone. But Reliance backed out of the project in 2014 and handed the land back to the government.

In 2016, the then government had announced that a Global City would be developed by a Japanese firm and Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor Development Corporation (DMICDC). But that plan, too, fell through because of differences between DMICDC and HSIIDC, which owns the land.

In 2019, the Haryana government designated the land as a “special zone”. It implied that the area was for mixed land use, which allowed the development of residential, commercial and recreational facilities. Last year, the Global City project was announced again, this time to be spearheaded by HSIIDC itself.