Bhubaneswar: The housing and urban development department is revising the detailed project report (DPR) for the ambitious Bhubaneswar Town Centre District (BTCD) project, minister Krushna Chandra Mahapatra informed the assembly recently.The minister said the redesigning has been necessitated because of the ongoing expansion work of East Coast Railway (ECoR) in the station area and the evolving urban development requirements around Master Canteen area.Responding to a question in the House, Mahapatra said the Bhubaneswar Town Centre (BTC) project, originally planned over 8.12 acres and later expanded to nearly 12 acres, is undergoing a structured redesign exercise.The focus, he said, is on synchronising the project’s core public infrastructure components with the major redevelopment activity around the Bhubaneswar railway station. These components include the bus stand, parking facilities, commercial establishments, and the mixed-use real estate component to be developed under the PPP model.The BTCD area, conceived under the Smart City Mission as the city’s first Transit Oriented Development (TOD) zone, is strategically located west of the railway tracks at Master Canteen Square and directly connected to Janpath—Bhubaneswar’s main commercial corridor.As part of the Smart City Proposal, it forms the centrepiece of the city’s Area-Based Development (ABD) plan, designed to transform the railway station area into a fully integrated multimodal hub promoting pedestrian-and transit-driven growth. However, the project was stalled for various administrative reasons in 2016-17.Officials said the ongoing DPR preparation involves extensive consultations with all stakeholders. The project consultant is working on integrating new design requirements, and the final DPR will be submitted after alignment with ECoR’s redevelopment plans and the city’s revised mobility and infrastructure needs.Once completed, BTCD is expected to anchor private-sector investment, streamline traffic around the station area, and showcase Bhubaneswar’s first smart building and TOD-led urban district—an urban transformation model that the state govt aims to replicate in other emerging growth nodes, sources said.
