BENGALURU: THE first open auction for long-term lease of shops owned by the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) on Monday generated a good response with 100 bidders throwing in their hat in the ring for 45 office spaces on offer. The auction was held at its Valagerahalli shopping complex on Mysuru Road.
With BDA commercial complexes generally generating a pittance as monthly rental incomes, the authority opted to go in for a lease of 30 years for its newly built complex. A community shopping centre inside the complex, which can house 36 stalls that can stock groceries and other small businesses, will go under the hammer on Tuesday.
Speaking to Express, BDA Superintending Engineer N G Gowdaiah said, “We had fixed the base price for the shops at `8,500 per sqft. The rates quoted by the bidders were way above what we had fixed, even nearly 50 per cent above. It has been an overwhelming response, both in terms of the number of bidders and quotes given.”
The shops ranged in dimensions between 150 sqft and 1,500 sqft. The auction began at 9 am and by 8.30 pm, 31 shops were leased, he said. The auction will continue late into the night till all the 45 shops are leased, Gowdaiah said.
Bidders plan to set up medical shops, offices, garment shops in the spaces for which bidding was completed on Monday. “While BDA was looking at `10 lakh per shop, the maximum quote today (Monday) for a shop was `19 lakh while the shop that went for the least price still fetched the BDA `14.5 lakh,” he added.
The plan to go in for e-auction was given up after feedback from public following an auction for car parking lots at Valagerahalli, he said.
The refundable deposit can be used to bid for different auctions in case the bidder did not succeed in the open auction format whereas the deposit gets blocked for one specific auction in the e-mode, the official said.
“The `1 lakh paid as initial refundable deposit today for the shops’ auction can be used for many shops even if the bidder fails in a few attempts to get one on lease,” he said. BDA will next conduct an open auction for commercial offices at Halage Vaderahalli on Wednesday (February 7). “Going by the inquiries so far in this connection, the auction is set to be even better than Monday’s bids,” Gowdaiah said.
