Aim to ride the aerotropolis wave

Hyderabad Airport City is part of GMR Hyderabad International Airport, which is currently in development phase. It is one of the largest airport cities (aerotropolis) in India spread over 1,500 acres of integrated ecosystem covering commercial office space, retail, leisure and entertainment, hospitality, education and healthcare. This airport city will focus on sustainable development using green technologies and new generation digital infrastructure along with quality physical infrastructure. As part of monetisation of land at the Rajiv Gandhi international airport here, GMR Hyderabad International Airport Ltd (GHIAL) is coming up with a ‘Business Park’ at the aerodrome. The park would comprise six towers with nearly one million sq.ft. of office space at an investment of about `350 crore. The company at the launch of GMR Business Park said that construction of one of the six towers has been completed and a portion of it was currently occupied by a GMR group company. The entire project may take another two or two-and-half years to get ready. A part of the investment would be from internal sources and the rest through borrowing, it said.

About current and upcoming projects
Hyderabad Airport City is the first initiative; GMR Business Park is essentially giving ready available space for IT and other companies who are looking to set-up or expand. It will provide ready space in a market which is otherwise; there is lack of available space in the city of Hyderabad today. The company is hoping that they can leverage that shortage of space by providing very quick solution. Unlike, the cities where one has to build significantly high-rise buildings and 4-5 levels of basement for parking, here the development cycle is much shorter because of one level basement and it is a campus like setting which one can find in Silicon Valley or other places. The company leveraged the quick development turnaround; basically the entire development cycle of first building will be hardly 13-14 months whereas, it takes two-three years to build the building in the city. The idea is to leverage the speed, advantages of airport city and try to attract IT tenant there.

Core objective behind airport city
The primary objective behind Hyderabad Airport City is the availability of land at the airport and as a business the company would like to monetise this plan. To bring maximum shareholder value and to maximise another business potential, the company decided to look at developing land that is available at the airport for different purposes and assets classes. The airport city itself is designed as a theme-based development, which has provisions for making a complete eco-system comprising of different assets classes such as commercial office, retail, entertainment, leisure, warehousing, industrial, etc. That’s the whole concept of aerotropolis.

Features of airport city
The airport city is right next to an airport and benefits from its infrastructure, excellent landscaping, low pollution level and fantastic connectivity not only for highways but also for metros connectivity which will eventually come and that’s the hallmark feature of an airport city. Unlike a city where development happens and then road and infrastructure comes later, one of the biggest advantages of development here is that the infrastructure already exits and it provides an alternate to a busy urban city set-up.

Technology used for sustainable development
Aerotropolis is a large eco-system staring from water conservation, use of renewable energy, promoting use of electric vehicles. The airport city is a Greenfield project so there’s an opportunity of creating electric charging station infrastructure which currently in the city will take years to establish but as it is a Greenfield site the company will be able to do it much quicker. The airport already has a 7.5 mega watt solar power plant; which will probably expand over the years as more and more developments happen.

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