Tidel Park Coimbatore to start functioning from Jan 2010

The much awaited IT park- Tidel park at Coimbatore is expected to start functioning from January 2010. After a three year wait, work in full swing for building the park inside the IT & ITES special economic zone (SEZ) at Vilankurichi, behind Coimbatore Medical College.

Promoted by the State-owned Electronics corporation of TamilNadu ( ELCOT), the project is expected to be ready for occupation by companies by September 2009. With a built-up area of 1.7 million sq ft, the Tidel Park is expected to provide employment to 12,000 IT & ITES professionals.

Conceived in August 2006, foundation stone for the Park was laid in February 2007, but the evacuation work began only in November 2007 and the civil works contract was awarded only in September 2008.

"The delay was mainly due to complying with various government stipulations and also since a contractor had backed out due to price escalation. A second global tender was floated and Mumbai based B E Billimoria & Co are the civil contractors now," Tidel Park Coimbatore’s Director and GM, planning, ELCOT, L Stanislaus told ET.



Moreover, ELCOT had also planned to scrap the residential building plan inside the IT-SEZ. "Since the SEZ is well within the corporation limit, we have decided to allot more space for IT companies and use the remaining space for bus parking and other social amenities like restaurant, gym and extra curricular activities," he added.

In the 56-acre IT-SEZ , Wipro, Tidel and TCS have a taken 9.5 acres each and HCL 5 acres for building their campus facilities. Two acres had been allotted to TNEB for sub-station. "In the 11.69 acres earlier allotted for residential area, five acres would be sold to an IT company," Mr Stanislaus said.

The Rs 370 crore Tidel Park would have three floors. The office space would be available from smallest module of 5000 sq ft up to 2 lakh sq ft with back up power from 5X2000 KVA DG sets.

Of the proposed 9.7 lakh sq ft IT & ITES space, companies have already shown interest to take 7.5 lakh sq ft and the ELCOT has asked them to re-confirm it. "The companies can occupy the space from Sept 2009 and after completion of interior decorations, the Tidel Park would be up and running from January 2010," Mr Stanislaus said.

Further, he said, ELCOT has called for tenders to build IT Parks in Trichy, Tirunelveli, Madurai, Salem and Hosur. "Despite general talk of slowdown, the demand for IT space is very much there and we plan to start construction works in other cities soon," he said.