CMDA relaxes the height for special buildings

C Shivakumar
Chennai:

Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority has relaxed the rules for
special buildings by increasing the maximum permissible height from
15.25 metres to 17 metres.



The proposal to increase the height of special buildings and group
development buildings was put forth by Confederation of Real Estate
Developers' Associations of India (CREDAI).



The proposal was cleared during the recent authority meeting. “The
meeting decided that the habitable floors must have equal height and
resolved to accept the recommendation of permitting maximum height of
17 metres for all special buildings and group developments,” the
sources said. Currently, only hospital buildings have the permission
for a maximum height of 17 metres.



“The amendments to development regulations will now be forwarded to
government for approval along with the views of monitoring committee,”
sources said.



The stilt plus four floor building (special building) could also ease
the burden on many developers who had been struggling to get
completion certificate as the building height would have risen by few
centimetres, said the source.



Meanwhile, CREDAI’s national chairman for Best Practices T Chitty Babu
has welcomed the move by CMDA. “Now home buyers could get more volume
of storage space. The move is equally beficial to engineers and
architectures,” he said.



“The car parking space would be larger besides there will be more
display space with better elevation and space utilisation,” Babu said.



Interestingly, CMDA held discussions with the Directorate of Fire and
Rescue Services and experts before arriving at a decision. “It was
recommended that maximum height of 17 metres may be permitted for
residential buildings (special buildings and group developments) with
dwelling units size of 100 square metre or more and for the buildings
of commercial use,” sources said.