One of the biggest residential developers in Gujarat has put a happy face on a golf community it’s building in India’s seventh-largest city.
Smile City is taking shape on 636 acres in Ahmedabad, the state’s business and commercial center. At build-out, the community is expected to consist of 825 villas, 1,700 apartments, a retail/commercial area, schools, a medical center, and other attractions, including an 18-hole golf course.
Ganesh Housing Company, Ltd., which put Smile City on the map in 2007, hopes it’ll soon be laughing all the way to the bank. Since it was founded, in 1960, the publicly traded company has built roughly 16 million square feet worth of residential space in and around Ahmedabad, which it believes “is set to enter a high growth phase.”
Ahmedabad’s golf development certainly appears to be entering a high growth phase. Earlier this year an Indian news service, DNA, reported that a handful of golf communities are set to spring up around the city, to capitalize on the growing appeal of houses that overlook golf courses. The nation’s home buyers, said DNA, “nowadays consider real estate which comes with membership of a nearby golf course” as “the best kind of property.”
Smile City’s championship-length golf course has been designed by Santa Rosa, California-based Golfplan, a firm founded by Ron Fream. The 120-acre layout, which is to be built in the first phase of the project, will be accompanied by a 100,000-square-foot combination clubhouse and recreation center. But the project has been awaiting government approval for 18 months.
Fream’s firm currently has a golf course under construction in Bangalore, at the Champion Reef golf community, and two others in planning in India.
This story originally appeared in the World Edition of the Golf Course Report, in a slightly different form. For a sample copy of the WorldEdition@aol.com.