Spread over 45 acres at Rajarhat-Bishnupur area near New Town, the affordable housing project, ‘RISE — Sports Republic’, will be a township with sports-related infrastructural facilities and academies.

Real estate conglomerate Merlin group has announced a Rs 2,000-crore sports-themed township project in West Bengal.

Spread over 45 acres at Rajarhat-Bishnupur area near New Town, the affordable housing project, ‘RISE — Sports Republic’, will be a township with sports-related infrastructural facilities and academies.

“Over Rs 2,000 crore will be the investment for developing the township in its entirety. Apart from the residential portion, the project will consist of four or five sports academies, a multispeciality hospital, a reputed brand school, and shopping malls. Total investment in sports infrastructure would around Rs 200-250 crore,” said Saket Mohta, managing director, Merlin Group.

“We are planning to fund the investment [mainly] through internal accruals. Any sort of deficit funding that we might come across, we would use bank financing to do that,” Mohta said.

The first phase of the project will be developed on 15 acres and will comprise 2,529 flats. It is likely to be completed in the next five years. “If we include the investment in land, the project cost for the first phase would be about Rs 1,150 crore,” Mohta said.

“The Kolkata property market has remained resilient during the pandemic. There had been a major revival in sales of residential real estate projects in the second quarter of 2020-21 riding on the back of resilient economy and vaccination drive by the government,” he said.