A month after the Mumbai Textile Mills deal, the limelight had turned to the Kohinoor Mill at Shivaji Park which was bought over by Kohinoor Projects — a joint venture between Unmesh Joshi (son of Sena leader Manohar Joshi) and Rajan Shirodkar, an associate of MNS chief Raj Thackeray. The 4.5-acre plot went at an unbelievable price of Rs 87 crore per acre, more than double the amount paid per acre for the Mumbai Textile Mills deal.

Like DLF, Kohinoor Projects, too, changed its plans from mall and commercial complex to an IT park. Construction on site has been at a complete standstill for over a year with the company making futile attempts at finding buyers for the plot. Sources from Kohinoor Projects say that the company today has a very negligible stake in the Shivaji Park project with its funding partner ILFS now being the major stakeholder.

The Lodha group, which had bought over the fifth mill — Apollo Mills at Chinchpokli — is building a super luxury residential project on the plot. Industry sources said that the group had recently retrenched a large number of its employees. The group’s HR head, Mahesh Thakur however, denied any such downsizing.

“It is a normal 10-20 per cent attrition per month. We are in fact, recruiting people,” he said.

Pankaj Kapoor CEO of Liases Foras, terms the mill land deals as the ‘genesis of price rise’ in Mumbai’s real estate. “The NTC deals had a cascading effect on locations as far as Kalyan. At Shivaji Park, Seth Developers doubled their rates overnight from Rs 12,000 per sq ft to Rs 24,000 per sq ft as soon as they heard about the Kohinoor land deal nearby.”

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