This is the Land which was auctioned by the Bank of Thailand subsidiary, The Financial Institute Development fund (FIDF).The auction consisted of 4 land Plots. This land, was originally the property of Erawan Trust, and was purchased from the indebted finance company in 1995 for 2,140,357,500 baht. Google Earth reference:
13 45 55 87N : 100 34 37 18E
As the photo's show, the land itself is located within a triangular area. In the top left of this triangle is the Thailand Cultural Centre. Immediately below is a SRT shunting yard, the actual plot has access to Thiam Ruam Mit road both at the northern and southern boundaries with the klong (canal) as the right boundary, and an access soi being the left boundary. The size of the 4 plots comes to 33 rai, 0 ngam, 78.9 sq wah (53,115.6 sq meters or 13.12 acres).
The earlier auctions for the land were actually slightly larger measuring 35 rai, 2 ngam, 69 sq wah (57,076 sq meters). Just over two rai was withheld for the later auction as the land would be used for road widening, additionally in earlier auctions the land was divided into 13 plots (1877, 1878, 30645, 30646, 30647, 30648, 30649, 30650, 30651 30652, 30653, 30654 and 114949).
The remaining land after the two rai was removed was incorporated into 4 plots by the land office on instructions from the FIDF and new deeds (2298, 2299, 2300, 2301) were issued.
At the time of the auctions, all areas of Bangkok operated under a single Floor Area Ratio (FAR), which governed the maximum height and minimum open space allowed for each building. The Ministry of Culture wanted to preserve the area around the Thailand Cultural Centre. In order to enforce this, a Bangkok Metropolitan Authority (BMA) rule on the maximum height of any building close to the Thai Culture Centre was introduced,(The Ministerial Regulation No. 414, BE 2542). This limited the height of any building to no more than 23 meters and also imposed some restrictions on development, and alteration of nearby properties.
On May 17th 2006 a new building regulation code was introduced into Bangkok, splitting the City into various zones, (Residential, Commercial and Industrial) with reduced Floor area ratios for much of metropolitan Bangkok. Previous restrictions, such as that applied to areas around the Thai cultural centre were effectively cancelled. Whilst the zoning regulations were the brainchild of the BMA, before introduction they required and received cabinet approval. Critics have highlighted the fact that this approval increased the value of the land purchased by Pojaman Shinawatra.
On 9th June 2001 an executive decree came into force establishing the Thai Asset Management Company (TAMC), with this new organization, large parcels of land became entrusted to this new company. Whilst the company itself was labeled a "Public Company" it was, and still is 100% owned by the FIDF. The purpose behind the new TAMC was to purchase Non performing Loans (NPL's) from the various State and Private banking institutes in order for the banks to clean up their balance sheets and hopefully start lending money again. It was at this time that the FIDF decided to follow the TAMC guidelines and re-classify its own assets. The criteria was that doubtful loans or land values would have 50% written off, as a result of this the 35 rai Ratchada Phisek land value was reduced from it's original value of 2,140,357,500 baht to what was considered by the FIDF to be a more realistic value of 1,310,100,000 baht.
