The Surat Municipal Corporation (SMC) has come up with an ambitious project of erecting a skyscraper of 30 floors at Udhna area in the city. The building will have recreational centres with a helipad on the terrace.

Municipal Commissioner S Aparna on Friday evening inaugurated the project on a 21,000 square metre plot near Kharwarnagar in Udhna on the Surat-Navsari Road.

The building will have various facilities like open-air theatre, library, art gallery, multiplex apart from a food court, walkway and many more attractions.

For the time being, SMC has named the project as ‘The Hub’ or ‘Iconic Building’. It will come up on a private-public partnership model. “After the BRTS corridor project on the Surat-Navsari Road completes by 2011, we expect around two lakh people to traverse the Udhna-Navsari Road. So, we have decided to come up with a new concept to utilise the empty spaces and erect such a building,” she said.

Surat has seen a lot of development in recent times. Drainage facilities, streetlights and roads have been renovated. Surat will also have Global Positioning System-enabled navigation and work on that is underway with help from the Rockefeller Foundation.

Apart from this dream project, SMC is also coming up with an entertainment park in Surat. The high-tech entertainment park project will come up in the Maghob area. It will be different from Appu Ghar in Delhi and Essel World of Mumbai, sources said. This project will also be developed on a public-private partnership model.