KTDC drops corporate office project

By Our Staff Reporter

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, AUG. 3. The Kerala Tourism Development Corporation (KTDC) has decided not to occupy the Rs. 3.7-crore corporate office building being built on the premises of the flagship Mascot Hotel premises and instead lease out the six- storeyed building for commercial ventures.

The Government had recently directed the Corporation not to use the 2,700 sq m building, being constructed on the four-acre prime land, for anything other than commercial purposes.

Without any budgetary assistance from the Government, the KTDC had invested its own funds in the building project. In view of the decision not to occupy the building, the corporation has dropped the idea of investing heavily on the interiors and has scaled down the estimate to Rs. 2.7 crores.

"We have decided to forgo the centralised airconditioning system, expensive flooring and interiors which we had planned earlier for the building," the KTDC Managing Director Dr. A. Jayatilak, told The Hindu.

The shell of the building has been completed and the Corporation's plan is to hand it over to private parties so that they can do the flooring and interiors to their taste.

"Many IT companies have already evinced interest in occupying the premises. We will be able to recover the money invested on the building through the lease amount," Mr. Jayatilak said.

The KTDC management had been secretly apprehensive that protest demonstrations in front of the corporate office building by employees would cause hindrance to guests in the adjacent star hotel.

It was in May 24, 1998 that the then Tourism Minister, Mr. E. Chandrasekharan Nair, laid the foundation for the corporate office building. The aim was to complete the project in 18 months.

The first four floors of the proposed building were to be occupied by the KTDC and the remaining were to be leased out. The proposal was to set up a satellite reservation centre of the Railways in the new complex and locate the central reservation office of the KTDC in it. The Indian Airlines city office is functioning just across the road.

The corporate office, which was functioning from Mascot Hotel, was shifted to Hotel Chaithram in 1998 as a stop-gap arrangement. In the wake of the KTDC's change in plans, the corporate office will soon be shifted to a rented building in the city.

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