No-parking plan annoys Commercial St traders

They say a majority of shoppers come in private cars and they shouldn’t be turned away

Traders are unhappy with the government’s plan to ban parking on Commercial Street.

Faizan Taher, proprietor, Eastern Stores and chairman of the Bangalore Commercial Association, says shops have been able to get back 30 to 40 per cent of their pre-pandemic business, but their efforts to bounce back further are ruined by bad governmental planning.

A point of contention is the Directorate of Urban Land Transport’s proposal to prioritise pedestrians, he says.

“The Smart City concept is not positive. We are welcoming people to the street, but where do they park their cars?” he says.

About 7,000 to 10,000 thousand are shopping at any given time, and of them, around 3,000 to 5,000 come in cars, he estimates.

People can go to the parks to walk. Commercial Street is a shopper’s paradise and not a pedestrian’s paradise, he argues.

Shops on Commercial Street, some tracing their origins to British times, sell everything from pins to fashion apparel to suitcases.

Mayank Rohatgi, secretary of Bangalore Commercial Association, agrees with Faizan.

The road construction and the lack of public toilets are keeping people away from Commercial Street, he says. “We cater to families. We can’t ask then to walk miles to the shops and back, carrying heavy loads,” he says.

Commercial Street is the highest tax-paying street in Bengaluru, paying as much as Rs 500 crore as GST every year. But it doesn’t even have an auto stand or cab enclosure, he says.

Optimistic view

Anil M Sancheti, senior associate partner, Mysore Saree Udyog, says customers are still not coming out to shop.

For a brand catering to a niche market, the pandemic has been particularly tough, he observes.

“It is not just that spending is down, but even the crowds are smaller. Garments are not like property and jewellery that appreciate in value,” he says, explaining why his business was hit.

It was not without a silver lining, though. He has added employees, and not laid off anyone. “It is a great time to build teams and train them. We will bounce back,” he says.

Twenty shops shut down

Since the pandemic broke out, 20 of 250 shops on Commercial Street have shut down.

Mannat, a fashion store, is one such. Rakesh Samtani, owner, is a third-generation retailer. The pandemic, he says, made it impossible for him to keep going.

“We were paying Rs 7.4 lakh as monthly rent. This was excluding GST. We tried negotiating with the landlord, who agreed to lower the rent by 25 per cent, but it was just not enough,” he says.

The pandemic cannot shoulder all the blame, he says. “It was a trigger, but there were many underlying causes to begin with,” he says.

Demonetisation, for example, had affected sales badly. With the spending on luxury products going down, most businesses were finding it hard to get by. The annual five to 10 per cent hike in rents had made matters worse. He believes it is only a matter of time before the street bounces back to its old glory. “It is a tourist hub that attracts people from everywhere. It caters to everyone and that’s the X factor that keeps people coming,” he says.