By some estimates, the shops in T Nagar-a majority of them selling textiles or gold jewelry-are together hitting revenues of nearly 20,000 crore every year. The official estimates put it much lower at over Rs 10,000 crore, but this is still double that of New Delhi’s Connaught Place, Linking Road in Mumbai and Bangalore’s Brigade Road which clock Rs 4,000-6,000 crore.

This has led to retailers flocking to this area, resulting in buildings with poor planning and facilities. The scene on the roads is worse; traffic jams are the norm and even on a lean day about 2 lakh pedestrians traverse the roads around Panagal Park, the central part of T Nagar.

“It’s the mecca of retail,” said India’s largest retailer Kishore Biyani of Future Group, which has over 17 million square feet of retail space in the country and more than two dozen brands. But it still hasn’t managed to open a single door at the main T Nagar junction. “We are working on a strategy for Chennai and you can’t ignore T Nagar. But getting space there has always been the only issue.”

It is to address such concerns that the city’s municipal corporation has tied up with real estate advisory firm Jones Lang LaSalle to work out a proposal to redevelop the area and make shopping there a more pleasant experience.

But at the same time they want to preserve what is good. “There are old shopping buildings that have become a heritage and we want to preserve that,” said A Shankar, local director of strategic consulting at Jones Lang LaSalle. Some of the suggestions to improve the area include creating a plaza for the hawkers and building skywalks connecting the nearest railway station and bus stand.

Other ideas are constructing multi-level parking lots and ‘pedestrianisation’ of the retail core area around Panagal Park, where about a million shoppers crowd during festivals and other busy periods.

It would be hard for a visitor today to T Nagar-named after one of the founders of the Justice Party, a precursor to other Dravidian parties-to believe that less than a hundred years ago it was all paddy fields. Nalli’s was the first showroom to appear in 1928 and soon other establishments followed.

“Nalli started as a baby here and now it has spread its roots to others parts of the country. This first store is what helped the firm grow to what it is today and venture into newer areas like jewellery,” Nalli Kuppuswamy Chetty said in a recent meeting with ET.

Though the five radial roads that lead to Panagal Park are wide, the pace of T Nagar’s growth took everyone, including the authorities, by surprise. Buildings mushroomed rapidly and the area soon became as popular for its congestion as for its wares.

source::::Economic Times

natarajan…Resident of T.NAGAR Chennai