Old airport road loses charm

Residential rents drop 5-10 per cent.

After the airport got shifted to Devanahalli, the residential rentals on the Airport Road has witnessed a 5 per cent to 10 per cent correction.

“In addition to residential, commercial B-grade and older development projects catering to immediate proximity of the Airport Road have also seen a correction. With the lack of new supply in the market and with the emergence of new growth corridor, the Airport Road is expected to see no increase in capital and rental values in the medium-term,” said Anurag Mathur joint managing director-India, Cushman Wakefield.

“After the shift, the airport road has become easy access to the IT-hub (Whitefield, Marathalli and Sarjapur areas). Commercial and retail rentals in these markets remain stable due to good connectivity with no significant new supply and the area now opens for affordable residential housing,” he added.

Along with IT-hub, access to non-Central Business District areas like Indiranagar, Old Madras road, C V Raman Nagar and Koramangala have also improved.

“As anticipated, the closure of the HAL Airport, has resulted in reduced traffic congestion on the Airport Road and the connecting arterial link roads. This has a positive impact on the space demand in neighbouring business locations,” said Ram Chandnani, Deputy Managing Director — South India, CB Richard Ellis.

The non-CBD areas around old airport is expected to witness a supply of 1.24 million square feet of commercial A-Grade office space in 2008. Absorption to the tune of 0.92 million square feet has already been taken up till second quarter (Q2) 2008.

The limited supply of commercial A-Grade office space in the both CBD and Off-CBD areas has also been impacted by the infrastructure strains due to construction of Metro Rail.

“Due to this, there has been a spillover to non-CBD areas like old Airport Road,” said Ram Chandnani.