Essar Realty Holdings—the real estate arm of the Essar Group—has won the bid for building a Rs 500-crore five-star hotel, utility centre and a multiplex at the upcoming Multimodal International Hub Airport in Nagpur.

The realty firm has also formed a joint venture with the US-based hospitality group Accor Hospitality to develop and manage the hotel project.

A few months back, the Maharashtra Airport Development Company (MADC), the nodal agency for developing the air cargo hub in Nagpur, had invited bids for the hotel cum conventional hall project. Essar Realty bid for the project through its subsidiary company Yojna Realties. G L Raheja group promoted Raheja Constructions was the immediate bidder for the project.

Essar Realty’s managing director Chirag Ramakrishna said “The MADC deal would reinforce our long-term commitment to the realty business as we continue to look at more opportunities in the realty sector.”

The five-star hotel would be developed in a 10-acre area adjacent to the National Highway VII on the Nagpur-Wardha road. The hotel would have a capacity to house 1,000 people. It would also have a service apartment to cater to the needs of executives who stay on for long tenures. MADC’s project is the second largest property deal struck by Essar Realty during the past six months. Earlier, the firm had acquired Peninsula Land’s (PLL) Kurla commercial project for close to Rs 1,200 crore.

Peninsula Land sold approximately 9 lakh square feet of commercial space to Essar Realty Holdings at its upcoming Peninsula Tech Park project. The proposed Nagpur airport project with an investment of Rs 3,000 crore is to be completed in four years, adding a new dimension to India’s capability of handling air cargo.

India’s air cargo traffic has inched up from 7.97 lakh tonnes in 1999-2000 to 8.4 lakh tonnes in 2001-02 and over 10.6 lakh tonnes now. MADC has already signed an MoU with Deccan Cargo for running the cargo hub at the international airport in Nagpur.