Bhubaneswar: The bid to design Bhubaneswar Town Centre (BTC) project, the first such transit-oriented development (TOD) project in country, has been won by a Singapore-based company Surbana Jurong.
The BTC project is being developed by the Bhubaneswar Development Authority (BDA) with a cost of over Rs 8 crores on around 12 acres of land. East Coast Railways and Bhubaneswar Smart City Limited will be the stakeholders of the projects as they fall within the limits of Bhubaneswar Town Centre Smart District.
Surbana Jurong portrayed a unique blend of contemporary designs and traditional temple building architecture to win the bid as Bhubaneswar is famous for its Kaḷingan architectural style.
Besides being a first planned TOD initiative, the BTC is also first smart building project in Bhubaneswar. The city’s Area Based Development vision revolves around the BTC project as part of the Bhubaneswar Smart City Proposal. The site is located on the west side of railway tracks at Master Canteen Square and is easily accessible from Janpath.
Elements like theatre plaza, retail and malls, nature plaza, landscape, town plaza, art plaza, experience plaza and children’s plaza are the attraction of the BTC project. Additional Commissioner-Cum-Member Enforcement, BDA, Bhabani Shankar Chayani had informed the BTC project will also have food courts, service apartments, pedestrian friendly streets along with dedicated pedestrian and cycling paths and the entire project would have an interactive as well as innovative environment.
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 dedicated pick up and drop off lanes for taxi aggregators and auto-rickshaws are other few things to be found in the multi-modal transit hub .
In December 2016, the Government of Odisha advised BDA to create a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) for the implementation of the Railway Station Multimodal Hub Project in Bhubaneswar titled- ``the Bhubaneswar Town Centre Project’’. This SPV is a 100% subsidiary of BDA and will serve as a dedicated agency to ensure successful implementation of the project in the next five years.