Don’t mess with Five Gardens: Dadar Parsi Colony residents to BMC

BMC plans to revamp Five Gardens, balancing modern needs with heritage, but local residents oppose changes, seeking preservation of original character

MUMBAI: The BMC has devised an ambitious conceptual plan to revamp the Grade III heritage Five Gardens with new interventions, which it terms “subtle and contemporary” and inspired by the original character of the neighbourhood. The BMC’s design consultant, Studio Piplikput, has proposed restoring and enhancing the existing flora and fauna “with a balance between Nature and public intervention spaces”. However, the project has drawn the ire of Dadar Parsi Colony residents.

Civic sources said that local residents feared that outsiders would disrupt the peaceful atmosphere of their neighbourhood.

Darayus Bacha, Member of Mancherji Edulji Joshi Colony Residents’ Association (MEJCRA), said that residents were opposed to the idea of revamping the heritage gardens. “Five Gardens is like the jewel in our crown,” he said. “We want the original look and character to be preserved. We need to retain flat gardens with green lawns without mounds or structures intruding. We don’t want an amphitheatre either. We just want the original three iron railings and an open look.”

Civic sources said that local residents feared that outsiders would disrupt the peaceful atmosphere of their neighbourhood. “They believe that Five Gardens is their private property,” said a civic official on condition of anonymity.

Prithviraj Chavan, assistant commissioner of F North ward, told HT, “We want to develop Five Gardens with five different concepts: for senior citizens, the differently abled, children, sportspersons and a theme convenient for people. There is opposition but we will try to find a compromise.” Chavan said another meeting would be held to find a middle ground.

The idea for the revamp is also being mooted by Jasmina Khanna, a differently abled person, and her physiotherapist Sanket Khadilkar, who have an NGO called Access to Hope which advocates and works on disabled-friendly infrastructure. They work under the Sugamya Bharat Abhiyan guidelines of the central government and Rights for Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016. They will be submitting their conceptual plan on Friday.

“We have worked with the BMC on different projects,” said Khanna. “Five Gardens is a place that persons with disabilities would like to visit. But currently it is not accessible to them.” Prashant Sapkale, deputy municipal commissioner of Zone II, has appointed Access to Hope to make Five Gardens accessible to all, including disabled people, senior citizens, mothers carrying babies in a stroller, pregnant women et al.

Khadilkar said that the work would be carried out in three phases, and they would revamp one garden, one footpath and one toilet in Phase 1. “These gardens have huge hindrances at the entrance,” he said. “The footpaths are uneven and there are no safety railings. We are at the planning stage right now; we will have a meeting this week with the BMC and residents with the conceptual design to get the go-ahead for the project.”

The earlier plan was to dig up all five gardens at one go without disturbing the heritage look as it is a Grade III precinct, but this was opposed by residents, who distrust the BMC. Bacha told HT that 100-year-old basalt stone footpaths had been removed and tampered with by the civic body. “They have been relaid after a lot of hard work and so we want the basalt stone footpaths as they are,” he said. “There are trees in the garden and outside the footpath. We do not want anything new to be added, as it invites problems.”

Bacha cited the example of a small six-inch divider between two roads on Lady Jehangir Road which had been replaced by planters. “The problem is that when the plants grow thick, we cannot see oncoming traffic,” he said. “These islands have become a death trap. We don’t want London-, Paris- or New York-style street furniture which ends up being used by vagrants and drug addicts. They can make it disabled-friendly by putting one ramp on the footpath so that wheelchairs can be brought up.”

Bacha said the residents were open to converting one toilet to make it disabled-friendly. “But please do not touch our gardens and footpaths, as this is a heritage property,” he said. “We request them not to mess with our Five Gardens. We want the water tables to be maintained and no concretisation for wheeling the wheelchairs. They can have four ramps on the footpaths to enter the gardens.”

Sheroy Daver, another member of MEJCRA, said the revamp should be beneficial to residents of the area without adding more concrete to a green area. “Over the years, that’s the only thing we have been fighting for,” he said. “Replace old benches with more comfortable ones, have wheelchair-accessible footpaths, add more trees. Put a new water connection in one of the gardens which has turned into a dust field. This is what we look forward to.”