Tall & Urban News

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has selected the 16th to 18th floors of 36-story JK House in the Breach Candy area of Mumbai to host a museum as part of its initiative to lift the city’s art and cultural spaces. Owned by Raymond Group’s Gautam Singhania, the land was turned into a mixed-use complex, with the promise of allotting three floors to the governing body. Though the project received all the civic clearances in 2017, the municipality’s building proposal department only recently moved on the museum project, owing to “procedural delays”. 
 
Spread over 26,500 square feet (2,462 square meters), the first floor of the museum will feature an urban planning exhibition, while the other two floors will exhibit artifacts from the Singhania family’s art collection, including an exquisite jade collection and textiles. With access through one exclusive lift, the entry tickets to the museum will be nominally priced, and it will remain open to the public on all weekdays from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. 
 
Civic officials say the high-rise museum project would have progressed earlier, but delays persisted. However, following directions from Municipal Commissioner Ajoy Mehta, the BMC formed a governing panel in 2017 to help sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between the governing body and the developer in July 2016. 
 
“According to the MoU, the BMC will collect all the revenue from the museum and maintenance charges will be borne by Raymond Group,” said a senior civic official. “The furniture and fittings are being carried out and inventories are being worked out simultaneously. Currently, the museum display and theme is being curated by Raymond’s in-house team,” a spokesperson for Raymond said. 
 
For more on this story, go to Mumbai Mirror.