Reliance Infrastructure to rent out its 6.95 lakh sqft Mumbai office space to an Educational Institute.

Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG) is in discussion to rent a portion of Whittle school and Studios, the educational institution located in Washington DC, from its subsidiary’s Santacruz headquarter, Reliance Infrastructure Limited (R-Infra). ADAG Chairman Anil Ambani told the UK court earlier this month that his net worth was zero and that he was in bankruptcy.

Ambani is being sued by three Chinese banks by Reliance Communications (RCom), another subsidiary of ADAG, for a loan default of about Rs 5,000 crore.

The headquarters of R-Infra, next to the Western Express Highway, is spread over 3.83 acres and has a built-up area of 6.95 lakh sq ft. To oversee the property transaction, multinational real estate advisory firm CBRE has been corralled in.

“The Santacruz property would get rent in the region of Rs 240 to Rs 250 per sq ft plus common area maintenance charges with easy access to the Western Express Highway and the airport,” an industry source said.

In 2003, R-Infra purchased the Bombay Suburban Electric Supply (BSES), a power distribution business in Mumbai. As part of the deal, the company acquired land covering 15,514 square metres. In August of last year, when the company sold its power distribution business to Adani Transmission, it held the land on which the headquarters stands for a sum of Rs.270 crore.

A Whittle School and Studios spokesperson confirmed the School was searching in Indian metros, including Mumbai, for campus locations. “Whittle schools and studios are spreading to other major cities globally, and we are finding campus in Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bangalore among our first three campuses (New York and Washington D.C. in the US, and Shenzhen in China),” the spokesperson said in a reply sent out by email to them.

The spokesperson wrote, “We only announce our campus sites when we have a full negotiation and are preparing to commence our recruitment of students,” when asked if it had been in talks with ADAG for their Santacruz properties.

Chris Whittle’s founded high-profile school aims to build campuses in 36 major cities throughout the world over the next 10 years. Such campuses are designed by renowned Italian architect Renzo Piano who designed landmarks like London’s Shard and New York City’s Whitney Museum of American Art.