If not for the World Trade Fair of 1968, it is doubtful whether Anna Nagar would have taken shape.
The locality hosted the world expo and the venue was later converted into a residential layout by the Tamil Nadu Housing Board (TNHB) in the 1970s. The iconic Tower Park that was constructed during the expo remains the area’s landmark.
When G.V. Ramachandran applied for a plot of land, as an investment, in the Anna Nagar layout in the 1970s, he never thought that it would turn out to be his home. A retired marketing executive of the Neyveli Lignite Corporation (NLC), Mr. Ramachandran, who constructed a house on the vacant plot in 1979, remembers that the verdant locality had few houses, fewer shops and very little traffic. He says that even when he moved from the bustling Teynampet area in 1989 to Anna Nagar, he never thought the calm residential locality — free of noise pollution — would one day become a most sought-after commercial locality in the city.
Mr. Ramachandran continues to be loyal to the Anna Nagar of bygone days over the present well-developed, but chaotic locality. The octogenarian says Anna Nagar had been developed on a planned grid format of residential blocks in alphabetical order characterised by individual houses, spacious roads, streets with no dead ends, ample footpath space, earmarked commercial zones and parks for all blocks.
But today, the area is full of multi-storeyed flats, with little demarcation between commercial and residential zones.
The senior citizen is happy though that the composition of the residents played an important role in the development of the locality.
