FMCG company buys 46 cottah on Shakespeare Sarani

KOLKATA: In an age when vaastu has become such an integral part of the overall attraction of a real estateproperty, anything that has come to be known as "jinxed" is scrupulously avoided. Very few indeed dare to buy bad luck. It was therefore a pleasant surprise when 30 Shakespeare Sarani just got picked up by aFMCG major who wants to remain completely anonymous.

The shyness is understandable. In this case, the buyer is believed to have bought the 46 cottah land for about Rs 100 crore, or Rs 2.17 crore a cottah - one of the highest priced transactions and the most expensive in recent times in the city. The seller is an NRI called Vinay Dewan, who is incommunicado. "A good buy" said the buyer.

The land in question is believed to have attracted attention several decades ago when Bata Shoe Company (much later Bata India Ltd) bought it from an Armenian and set up its corporate headquarters there. Those were different days and this arterial road was then called Theatre Road and was the only street in the city to have a bust of William Shakespeare at one end. Always a tremendous address to have, Theatre Road housed the offices of Brooke Bond, The British Council, The Astor and so on.

The property never got any undue attention till maybe October 1995, when a financially weakening Bata India - its top and bottomline eroding fast - sold off 30 Shakespeare Sarani to KND Engineering Technologies of Pessi N Dadina for just Rs 19 crore. However, KND too couldn't make much use of what it had bought and finally sold the property off around 2009 to Vinay Dewan.

It was then that the rumour mill started functioning. Word got out that the property was perhaps jinxed. If Bata's fortunes had got all but destroyed staying there and Pessi Dadina also couldn't make much of it, surely the property must be jinxed. And that was how the land got into disrepute. Strangely, even Dewan presumably couldn't do much with the land for it remains almost as it was years back, except maybe the debris got cleared a bit more.

As the news got around, real estate developers unanimously felt that Rs 100 crore for the land was indeed a "rare good price", and that it was certainly one of the best fetched for a property of that size and reputation.

So now it's the turn of the new buyer to make whatever it can do with the property. The plan is to build an up-market residential complex, packed with swanky lifestyle options and trendy architecture. "Opinions vary from person to person and therefore, whatever the rumours may be, we think it is a very good buy" said sources close to the buyer.

"Premium apartments in and around Shakespeare Sarani are in huge demand and can fetch anywhere between Rs 15,000 - Rs 18,000 per square feet. That is the reason why the buyer intends to rope in top Indian and foreign architects to do the construction" they said.

Source: economictimes.indiatimes.com