Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: The Design Vetting Committee (DVC) of the Capital Development Authority (CDA) is going to scrutinise plans for 10 new buildings on Friday (today).

A meeting of DVC is scheduled to be held at the CDA Headquarters on Friday. It will be chaired by Planning and Design Member Asad Mehboob Kiani. DVC is mandated to approve the building plans of commercial projects in the federal capital.

The participants of the meeting will review a total of 10 building plans, including two proposed high-rise buildings on plots number 1 and 2 of Blue Area.

The ground plus three storeys will be used for commercial purposes, while rest of the building will have the residential apartments and offices. The aforementioned plots are situated right in front of the Centaurus Mall in Blue Area.

Other buildings plans to be discussed in the meeting are: ground plus five storey building for economy flats on plot number 8 in Sector G-11/3, ground plus three storey commercial buildings on plot number 21 of sector G-7, plot number 8 and 16 of Sector I-8 and plot number 1 in the Sector D-12.

The designs of ground plus five storey building for the offices of State Bank of Pakistan in Sector G-5 and a ground plus three storey building of Pakistan Nuclear Regulatory Authority is also on agenda of the meeting.

Earlier, the builders and CDA had developed differences over the ratio of the car parking space for the plots of Blue Area.

The owners want to deviate from the terms of their allotment letters by seeking the approval of a building plan with one car parking space against each 1,000 square feet covered area, instead of original one car parking space against each 500 square feet area.

However, after a number of meetings, the incumbent CDA management declined the requests and asked the construction companies to allot a space of 250 square feet per car parking in their basements.

Talking to Daily Times, the Islamabad Builders Association (IBA) president said: “Even though we this demand is unjustified, we have decided to follow the orders of civic body.”

Earlier, Daily Times highlighted that the civic body was working in the absence of any regulation about parking space. There is no set rule for determining the parking area of commercial buildings, including plazas, hotels, restaurants and skyscrapers before their designs are approved by the CDA.

When compared to rules currently being enforced in other large cities of the world, CDA’s parking requirements fall far short. It seems the authority is violating and ignoring the international parking standards.

The data obtained from the official websites of several international cites reveals that the average car parking requirements in larger cities is one car parking space for one room, five car parking spaces for 500 sq feet area of restaurant and hotels and three car parking spaces for every 1,000 sq feet of commercial property.

Published in Daily Times, July 21^st, 2017.