Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: The Capital Development Authority (CDA) is planning to impose parking charges on builders, who are interested to get permission for construction of additional floors on top of existing commercial buildings in Islamabad.

The amount to be collected under this head will be spent on construction of state-of-the-art parking plazas to create more parking space in all residential sectors to facilitate the masses.

The 12th CDA board meeting is secluded to be held today (Thursday) under the chair of its chairman to discuss an eleven-point agenda, including the aforementioned summary.

Currently, there are a large number of commercial buildings in the city where some owners have already constructed additional floors without approval from the civic body, while some are approaching the CDA to get permission in this regard.

Earlier, the CDA board had also approved a policy, according to which the construction of additional floors was subjected to the payment of additional cover area charges.

However, it was envisioned that with the enhancement of covered area, the parking requirement will also be increased simultaneously. The authority had figured out several options to cope up with the said issue and finally a summary in this regard was moved by the Directorate of Traffic Engineering and Transportation Planning.

“The builders will have to provide one car space against each 1,000 square feet additional cover area or he will have to pay the parking charges,” an officer of the authority wishing not to be named said. “The charges for one car space are approximately Rs 600,000 and it will be calculated according to the size of additional cover area.”

Though the summary is quite necessary to accommodate the increasing need of parking requirements, some officers in the civic body are of the view that the authority instead of fixing uniformed rates should fix rational rates sector wise because the price of land is different in each sector.

When contacted, CDA Public Relations Director Malik Mazhar Hussain said: “The summary would be discussed in detail by the board members and I can’t say anything until the final decision of board, which is an apex decision-making body of the CDA. I assure you that the decision will be taken after due deliberations talking all aspects into count.”

Meanwhile, a meeting of the design vetting committee will also be held today (Thursday) to scrutinise seven building plans for upcoming projects in Islamabad.

The projects include luxury apartments in Sector F10, a school building in Sector H11/4, commercial buildings in Sector G8 and Sector G11, Higher Education Commission campus in Sector H8 and a building in Blue Area.

Published in Daily Times, October 5^th 2017.