West Chennai's answer to Tidel Park has been the Olympia Tech Park (OTP), across the road from the Guindy Industrial Estate. The Industrial Estate itself has been trying to re-emerge as a location of choice for new age industries; with a couple of large buildings, it is certainly not a location to be ignored, if one is interested in such things.The OTP has come up where the Eveready factory used to be earlier. It does not obviously acknowledge its earlier avatar and has certainly been able to shake off any past associations. But it has not been able to establish itself as THE showpiece high-tech workplace in this part of the city, which is something that Tidel Park has been able to hold on to. Being set close to the road, it does not have the 'grand entrance' feel that Tidel Park has; more so because the 3 buildings (Citius, Altius, Fortius) together do not have as much space as the one big block at Tidel does!(
Maybe I'm biased, having worked out of Tidel, and not even having visited OTP!)
A couple of years ago, one of my friends from Delhi misunderstood where I was going to on a workday morning. He thought I was going down to a beach for the day, while I was trying to let him know I was going to be working out of the most high-tech office space in the city. For a while there was confusion, while we were trying to understand what each other was saying.To me, that bit of conversation highlighted how much part of us the Tidel Park has become. No one in Chennai will think of anything other than IT or ITES if you say 'Tidel' to them. But I must admit, it does sound like a theme park by the Bay of Bengal, fed by the tides! The building itself looks grand and it is quite a good start to the IT Corridor - and to think that, less than 10 years ago, it was the beginning and the end of the Corridor!
