The pull of the mill in Lower Parel

Talk about Mumbai and spontaneity. A former mill turns into a mall and a locality swiftly transforms. Look at it now. Lower Parel is the next best everything — from commercial centres to nightlife to shopping to residential.

It was in the early ‘90s that companies first considered shifting base to the “mill area” — certainly not an easy decision but one eased by the promise of low rents and bigger floor areas. The site of relentless agitations was on its way to ‘coolness’.

Ad man Alyque Padamsee, who took the Lintas office out of the happening Nariman Point and planted it in Parel, reckoned a re-positioning of brand Parel was in order. He called it Upper Worli, in an attempt to stretch the northern limits of the coveted southern side. “I remember Alyque calling it Upper Worli. We used to joke about how he was trying to re-brand the area. But it was such a visionary thing to do,” says Nandini Dias, chief operating officer, Lodestar Universal, who then worked with Lintas.

But today, Lower Parel isn’t ‘hot’ by affiliation. People no longer feel the need to call it Upper Worli. According to Shailendra Singh, joint managing director, Percept (also one of the early movers into Lower Parel), when his agency shifted from Marine Lines, it had to create a great office ambience to make up for the area it was based in. “Today, a person who works for 10 hours here, has enough options to hangout till 9.30-10.00pm and then head home when the traffic is less,” says Singh.

This transformation that began gradually in the nineties has only accelerated in the last five years. No one really disputes Phoenix Mill’s role in all of that. According to Singh, Lower Parel became what it has because of the “vision of Atul Ruia”, managing director, Phoenix Mills. “High Street Phoenix started it all,” says Singh, “First there was Sports Bar, which was followed by Pantaloon. And then there was Big Bazaar. It also had a great nightclub, Fire and Ice.

As a result, its appeal extended from the higher to the lower middle classes. It became a habit for people to come to Phoenix Mills.” A burgeoning office population and some bit of south Mumbai that began to venture mid-town to explore the new terrain, made investments in standalone set-ups in the area prudent. “A lot of investors have contacted us to set up bars/pubs on the property,” confirms Gaurav Todi, director, Todi Mills, which houses Zenzi Mills.  

And that’s just the past five years. “Five years ago, there were no places to eat in Lower Parel. You had to carry your own lunch from home. There was no life. Phoenix changed everything. Kamala Mills has become a commercial complex and so has Raghuvanshi Mills. Nightclubs, earlier restricted to Phoenix, have started coming up in places nearby — Blue Frog, Hard Rock Cafe and Zenzi Mills being some of them,” says Todi.

There is also a five star and a seven star hotel in the area, and world’s leading fashion and luxury brands have set up shop in Palladium in High Street Phoenix.

Singh, who was one of the first few residents at Phoenix Towers completes this imagery of now and then, “When I moved in here, there were khandars right opposite Phoenix Mills that looked straight out of a Ramsay movie. There were vada pav stalls on either side of Tulsi Pipe road. Today there are two flyovers. And while the vada pav stalls are still there on one side of the road, there’s McDonald’s on the other.”

Since then, Lower Parel has become a lucrative address to stay at. “I have a lot of friends who have relocated from their small places in Bandra and Colaba to live in bigger places in Lower Parel,” says Nikhil Chibb of Colaba-based restaurant Busaba. Chibb now plans to open a resto bar in Lower Parel.

“I will go to the extent of calling it the Covent Garden of Mumbai,” says Singh. “Like Leicester Square and Covent Garden in London, Lower Parel has got all the qualifications to be called a ‘hangout’ of the city. Socially it’s upwardly mobile. It’s got night-clubs, lounge bars, and top-notch eateries.”

For Dias, Lower Parel is the best place for an ad agency to set up office since it keeps you in touch with the latest trends. “Even in the afternoons, when I come down to Phoenix Mills, it’s a picnic-like atmosphere. It’s nice and energising.”

Chibb says it’s not just the South Mumbai person or the Bandra person alone who is coming here to spend his/her evenings; the clientele will go much more local in the days to come. As he sees it, “Parel will become more exclusive, and culturally more self-contained in the days to come.”