The city’s first skywalk is proposed to come up near the Mini Vidhana Soudha, connecting it with the Town Hall, thus meeting a long-pending demand of the public. It will be funded and built by the Karnataka Coastal Development Authority (KCDA) for the Mangaluru City Corporation. Its foundation stone will be laid on August 23.
“The heavily crowded area urgently requires a skywalk. The authority will build some more of them in the city,” said Nivedith Alva, chairperson of KCDA.
KCDA will now release Rs. 81.2 lakh for the project. The city corporation will have to bear minimal cost as the Nirmiti Kendra will build it. A Kendra official said that as per the plan, there will be escalators on both sides. For climbing down, only stairs will be available. The official said that this is mainly to get more people to use the skywalk. The corporation is yet to hand over the land and no-objection certificate for the project, the official said. Thus, a deadline has not been set.
Meanwhile, a KCDA official said that the total project cost was yet to be finalised, but the corporation will have to bear just about 5 per cent of it. After building the skywalk, the authority will hand it over to the civic body for maintenance.
The matter of building a skywalk had come up for approval at the council meeting of the corporation last month. The council had referred it to the Standing Committee for Town Planning and Improvement.
Earlier, J.R. Lobo, MLA, Mangaluru City South, had urged the authority to build this skywalk, saying that passengers who come from Mangaluru Central Railway Station also cross the road in this area to board city buses.
