Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: The Design Vetting Committee (DVC) of the Capital Development Authority (CDA) has once again refused to approve changes in the approved building plan for Centaurus Shopping Mall on Tuesday saying that the matter was of policy nature which is not the purview of the DVC.

“Now they will come to the CDA for a change of policy and the CDA Board will decide whether Pak-Gulf Construction (Pvt) Limited (PGCL) can change the usage of Tower-C initially planned for offices to a hotel tower,” a CDA source briefed Daily Times on the condition of anonymity.

Earlier on March 6, the design vetting committee had met under the chairmanship of Member Planning and Design CDA, Asad Mehboob Kiani, and deferred the matter by instructing the PGCL to come up with a proposal of the whole scheme in the next DVC meeting.

According to the CDA sources the PGCL owners came in the meeting without a proposal for the whole project.

“Now they are intending to change the planned structure of the building and we asked them to bring the whole scheme of the project so that it could be checked whether it is in the purview of the DVC or the authority, as we are not the policy making body of the authority, we can just give recommendations required at the desired site,” the Director Building Control Section (BCS), Shafi Marwat, told Daily Times.

He added: “It was in the purview of the CDA Board that they can use the office tower for a hotel or not.” He said that he had written a letter to the Institute of Architects Pakistan (IAP) to guide the authority regarding the permissible criteria for the circulation area. The CDA source said that a lot of multinational companies were in the row and in the search of offices in Islamabad and in the wake of the CPEC, the need for offices had increased immensely, whereas the CDA had launched operation against non-conforming use of buildings which also gave rise to the need of office spaces for NGOs and other multinational companies in Islamabad.

The CDA had leased out the 32,040 square yards to Pak Gulf for Rs 6 billion for the construction of a hotel, a shopping area and residential apartments. The firm completed the shopping mall and the residential apartments but without the five-star hotel.

Sources believe that the said plot was auctioned at the controlled rate for the construction of a hotel cum shopping mall, residential apartments and offices, but now the owner wants to avoid the construction of a five star hotel as it is a less profitable business with a static investment of billions.

According to the CDA documents as per its original approved design the Centaurus Mall was supposed to construct four towers — A, B, C and D. The fourth (D) was to be the hotel tower having 42 storeys. Towers A and B were meant for apartments while Tower C was for offices.

But now the owner of the mega shopping mall was not interested in constructing Tower D and wanted to get a permission to convert Tower C into the hotel tower, deviating from the original approved design. For reviewing their request, it was the second meeting of its design vetting committee (DVC). The committee discussed the design plans of Centaurus Shopping Mall’s Tower C.

The sources said that the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) was the main hurdle in the way of the PGCL to build Tower D. According to the plan the height of Tower-D is 745 feet, whereas the CAA does not permit high rise buildings more than 500 feet high.