KOCHI: What not to do with a building! That seems to be exactly what Kochi’s GCDA Shopping Complex stands for. With its central location and most-modern amenities, the building was a before-its-time concept just like its contemporary-the Marine Drive. But while the Marine Drive grew to one of the landmarks of the city, the 214-room shopping complex is now a combination of abandoned shopping spaces and paan-reddened walls.The two-floored structure has everything that a shopping complex could possibly hope for- a location right in one of the busiest and central parts of the city, spacious and well-designed architecture, ample parking spaces modelled on world-class designs, over 200 rooms and most importantly a direct passage to the landmark hangout of the city- the Marine Drive. ‘The Golden Shop, Nagarjuna Handicrafts, Silver Oak … so goes the shop list on the huge wooden display board. But the names of the shops belong somewhere in the history of the building. Today none of these shops can be seen. Most of them have shut down and abandoned for better business areas. “We could not make up the cost of the rent. We had it for around 8-10 years. The it just became impossible to continue,” says Hantex managing director Abdul Halim. The 4,000-sq ft Hantex showroom has been abandoned for more than a year now. This is in spite of the fact that the rent in the building is just a quarter of that in the malls around it.“Our base price is Rs 15 per sq ft. In and around this area, the showroom base price is Rs 40-100. Since this is a government undertaking, we are not looking at profits only,” says Shashi, who heads the shop owners committee set up by the GCDA. But the drop in rent is apparently not attracting any businessmen or customers for that matter. Though the authorities confirm that only six out of the 214 rooms are lying vacant, a cursory look at the building will show you the number might just be too conservative. In the first floor almost two-third of the shops have their shutters closed.“That is because many who take the shops on rent from the GCDA later rent it out to others who abandon the shop. Some of the shops are used as go-downs,” says a GCDA worker at the complex. So what made Kochi’s premier shopping mall a godown?The reasons given by shop-owners here are many: “The elevators are not functioning so no one comes up stairs, so no business… Most of these are second-hand mobile shops, they depend mainly on migrant labourers, there is no market for other products. Many of these are given on sub-lease to anti-social elements who create trouble here and so on and so forth. S Krishnakumar, former Ernakulam District Collector, was one of the brains behind the shopping complex and the Marine Drive next to it. “Even when I drove in front of the building, I was completely disheartened. When all the malls and buildings around it are making profit, how is it that the shops in this alone are running on losses. From whatever I have heard, many of those shops are cornered by political groups, many of whom are not paying the rent. Wrong allotment at low prices is another allegation. That was a structure built with a vision of Kochi, 30 years in future. Today it is all in ruins,” he says.
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