City may scale new heights as highrises get airport nod

Mumbai: The city may grow a little taller as more highrises get the green signal. After increasing the maximum permissible height of buildings in the airport vicinity from 150 m to 300 m, the Airports Authority of India (AAI) has sanctioned the construction of five highrise projects in the past five months.
The civil aviation ministry and the AAI hiked the maximum permissible height of buildings within 20 km of the Mumbai airport to 300 m in May 2009. This means that, all calculations done, a structure-at a distance of 9 km from the airport-can go up to 300 m high. "These calculations include a lot of elements like the length and width of the runway, the slope of the land and many more geometric combinations. The height permitted is also case-sensitive,'' said a senior AAI official.
"Sanction to the buildings means that they do not come in the way of aircraft in and around the city. The rules to get the nod used to be very stringent, but now, the new guidelines have opened the option for the buildings to go higher,'' said an airport official.
The move has been followed by a spate of applications from builders, demanding heights for structures that were not allowed before. A building on the Kohinoor Mill compound in Dadar has been sanctioned a height of 161 m, while another one in Byculla division has been granted 244 m. A 206-m structure has been sanctioned for the same builder near Turf Estate in Lower Parel and another 277-m project has been given the nod in Byculla. Another project in Prabhadevi has been given the green signal to go up to the height of 231 m.
"The buildings have been allowed to be constructed up to more than 150 m after the permissible height rule was amended to 300 m,'' said G P Hela, general manager (aerodrome), western region.
11/01/10 Chinmayi Shalya/Times of India

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Categories: Airports Jan 2010