Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami will inaugurate on Thursday the ‘quick win’ component of the lake development project that the Coimbatore Corporation undertook at ₹ 89 crore under the Smart Cities Mission.
The Corporation carved out a portion of the ₹ 700-crore lake development project, which involves revamping eight lakes in the city, to create the ‘quick win’ component as it wanted to showcase to the city’s residents what it was doing on the lakes and how it would transform the lakes under the Mission when it would complete the entire project.
Under the ‘quick win’ component, the civic body had proposed development of a one-km stretch of the northern bund of the Ukkadam Periyakulam (Big Tank), the road that cuts across the Valankulam, connecting Trichy Road to Sungam Bypass Road, and the portion of the southern bund of the tank that is beneath the Sungam Bypass Road flyover. The works are expected to be completed by July-end.
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Recreation facility
The Corporation sources said that both Periyakulam and Valankulam would turn into places of attraction and recreation as both the lakefronts would have space for conducting shows, holding meetings, bicycling, walking track, children playing or families spending their evenings.
It was building an amphitheatre, bicycling and walking tracks, pontoon, erecting structures for shops, landscaping the bunds, decorating the bottom of the flyover with bamboo sticks and ornamental lights and constructing a boat jetty.
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Aside from recreation, the Corporation had also focussed on the need to restore the lakes by preventing entry of sewage and creating natural barriers and filters to clean the inflowing water, sources said.