The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation has selected Peddar Realty Ltd’s Rs 1,351-crore bid to redevelop the Century Mills workers’ colony in Lower Parel, a step that brings roughly 650 families of former mill workers closer to permanent housing after a wait stretching back to the mill’s 2006 closure, according to Free Press Journal and Swarajya. Peddar Realty outbid three other developers, K Raheja Corp, Keystone Realtors and Shapoorji Pallonji Real Estate, for the 6.17-acre plot, against a reserve price of Rs 1,348 crore on land currently valued near Rs 660 crore.

A dispute two decades in the making

The plot’s history traces back to a 1927 lease granted to Century Spinning and Manufacturing Limited, which expired in 1955 and touched off a prolonged ownership dispute. The Bombay High Court ruled in the company’s favour in 2017, but the Supreme Court dismissed the company’s plea in January 2025 and upheld the BMC’s ownership claim, clearing the way for the civic body to finally invite tenders in December 2025. The mill itself shut in December 2006, and both outlets reported that at least 250 of the original worker-families have died while waiting for the redevelopment to materialise, longer than most Mumbai mill-land disputes have taken to resolve.

The colony today holds 23 buildings with 476 occupied tenements and 10 shops, housing families whose current units measure roughly 180 sq ft. Under the plan, occupants are expected to move into rehabilitation flats of about 405 sq ft, more than double their present space, inside a high-rise complex built on the MHADA model, alongside market-rate apartments that will help fund the project under a 30-year public-private partnership.

What it means for residents

For the families still living in the colony, this bid is the clearest signal yet that redevelopment is moving from litigation to execution, though it is not yet final. The proposal must still go before the BMC’s Improvements Committee for approval before a contract is formally awarded to Peddar Realty. Only after that clearance will construction timelines, temporary relocation arrangements and the finer terms of the rehabilitation flats be settled. Residents will be watching those details closely, given how many earlier promises around Mumbai’s mill-land redevelopments have slipped.

The case also matters beyond Lower Parel. Mumbai has dozens of former textile mill compounds in various stages of redevelopment, and outcomes here on flat sizes, PPP structuring and approval timelines are likely to be cited in negotiations over other mill-worker colonies still awaiting resolution.

Outlook

The next concrete milestone is Improvements Committee sign-off; only then does a construction timeline become public. Residents and civic watchers will also be tracking whether the 30-year PPP lease structure and rehabilitation-flat sizes hold up once detailed plans are filed, given the project’s decades-long history of delay.

Sources: Free Press Journal, Swarajya

This report was compiled and written with AI assistance from publicly reported sources, and reviewed for accuracy.