RDA Awards Three Year Contracts for Two Raja Bazaar Parking Plazas

The Rawalpindi Development Authority has awarded three year contracts for two parking plazas in Raja Bazaar following an open auction, on the directions of Rawalpindi Commissioner and RDA Director General Salman Ghani. The auction covered the parking plaza at Fawara Chowk along with a second facility located opposite the Tehsil Office.

Who Won and For How Much

An auction committee chaired by RDA's Director Estate Management, Iftikhar Ali, and attended by Director Engineering Komal Chaudhry, Deputy Director Finance Ayesha Badar, Deputy Director Estate Management Abdul Rahman and Deputy Director Planning Muhammad Daud, reviewed the bids and completed the process under prescribed rules and procedures. The Fawara Chowk parking plaza contract went to Zabiullah at an annual rent of Rs64.715 million, while Waseela Enterprises secured the Tehsil Office facility at an annual rent of Rs4.685 million. The committee also approved a 10 percent annual increase in rent for both plazas over the life of the three year contracts.

The Facility Itself

The Fawara Chowk parking plaza is a multi storey structure built by RDA through its own resources, positioned at the convergence point of six major roads in one of Rawalpindi's busiest commercial districts, serving the DHQ Hospital, the Tehsil Office and the dense network of markets that make up Raja Bazaar. A 2024 review of RDA's own traffic data found more than 60,000 vehicles moving through roads around Fawara Chowk daily, with parking space needed for at least 1,200 vehicles, against an existing arrangement that accommodated only around 200 at the time.

Part of a Long Running, Officially Documented Parking Shortfall

Rawalpindi's parking capacity gap around Raja Bazaar is not a new or informally understood problem. In 2019, the Rawalpindi Metropolitan Corporation approved a Rs4 billion plan under a public private partnership to construct three separate parking plazas, one at Bani Market for Rs1.6 billion, one at the old RMC office site on Jinnah Road for Rs1.9 billion, and one in Commercial Market for Rs472 million, alongside a separate RDA plan to add three more floors to the existing Fawara Chowk facility at a cost of roughly Rs400 million. According to the Punjab Public Private Partnership Authority's own project page for the Jinnah Road site specifically, the stated objectives include providing state of the art, well managed parking facilities, supporting smart urban growth through improved street mapping, reducing traffic congestion and travel time, and drawing additional commercial activity into the surrounding area through retail space built into the plaza itself.

The Jinnah Road Plaza Remains Stuck in Planning

Separately from this week's Fawara Chowk contract award, the long discussed Jinnah Road parking facility, planned for the site of RMC's demolished 145 year old office building, remains stalled at the feasibility and provincial approval stage years after it was first proposed under the 2019 public private partnership framework. The site, spanning roughly three kanals and 10 marlas, has been earmarked for a five storey structure with parking for thousands of vehicles alongside ground floor retail, but formal Punjab government approval has yet to be granted despite a completed feasibility study.

What This Means for Traders and Property in Raja Bazaar

For traders, shopkeepers and visitors in Raja Bazaar, the immediate practical outcome is that Rawalpindi's primary dedicated multi storey parking facility is back under contracted private operation. The underlying capacity shortfall documented in RDA's own traffic study, however, remains structurally unresolved pending the long delayed Jinnah Road facility and the other public private partnership sites planned back in 2019. Property and business owners along the Raja Bazaar corridor should continue to factor parking access directly into any commercial location decision, given how directly the area's well documented parking constraints have already been shown to affect footfall and accessibility for a market that depends on both.

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Sources

1. Punjab Public Private Partnership Authority, official project page, "Construction of the parking cum commercial plaza at Old Rawalpindi MC Office Site Jinnah Road, Rawalpindi": https://ppp.punjab.gov.pk/parking-plaza-MC-office-Rawalpindi
2. Rawalpindi Development Authority, official website: https://rda.gop.pk/
3. Rawalpindi Metropolitan Corporation, official website: https://rmc.gop.pk/