Reading the master plan: 10 acres, 11 towers, and the space between

Buyers spend an hour in the show flat and four minutes on the master plan. It should be the other way round. The flat can be changed. Where your tower sits, what it faces and how far you walk to the gate are fixed on the day the layout is sanctioned.

What this one shows

Ten acres. Eleven towers. Each configured as three basements, ground, a podium and twenty-one floors, with four apartments on each floor. Amenities are gathered on a podium level rather than scattered at ground level.

That last decision is the one with the largest effect on daily life, and it is worth unpacking.

Why the podium matters

A podium puts the parking below and the people above. Cars enter, descend and stop. Above them sits a deck with no vehicles on it at all.

Three things follow.

• Children can be let out. A ground-level scheme with internal driveways means a parent watching for reversing cars. A podium removes the conflict rather than managing it.
• The green space is usable green space, not the strips left over between driveways and visitor bays.
• Noise moves down instead of across. Engine noise and horns stay in the basement levels.

The trade is that a podium raises the whole ground plane. Getting from the lobby to the road involves a level change, and deliveries, taxis and ambulances all arrive at the basement or the edge rather than at your door.

Density, done as arithmetic

Eleven towers, twenty-one floors, four apartments per floor. That is up to 924 homes on ten acres, or roughly 92 homes per acre.

For context, that is a genuinely low figure for a Pune project of this scale. Schemes at eight units per floor on the same footprint would carry close to double.

Treat 924 as an upper bound rather than a count. It assumes every tower is identical and every floor is full, and towers on the edge of a plot are frequently shorter. The number to ask for is the total number of units filed on the MahaRERA record for each phase, which is the count the developer has actually declared.

Four questions to ask of any master plan

1. Which tower am I in, and what does it face? Ask to stand on the plot at roughly the right spot. Orientation, the neighbouring building line and what you overlook are decided by position and cannot be changed afterwards.
2. What is the gap between my tower and the next one? Two towers thirty feet apart look fine on a plan and feel very different from a fifth-floor balcony.
3. Which phase is my tower in, and when does that phase complete? On a multi-phase site you may move in while construction continues beside you. That is normal, and it is better to know the duration in advance.
4. Where does construction traffic enter? The gate that serves the later phases is the one you may be living beside for years.

The document that governs

The layout in a brochure is a marketing drawing and can be revised. The layout uploaded to the MahaRERA record for your phase is the sanctioned one, and revisions to it have to be disclosed.

Download it, take it with you on the site visit, and compare what is drawn against what you are told. Half the questions above answer themselves once you can do that.