"Zhoghovurd" daily writes:
"Yesterday, at the government session, Yerevan Mayor Tigran Avinyan presented an investment program, the purpose of which is to bring order to the overall appearance of the Cascade complex and to implement the Tamanyan and Jimtorosyan concept.
The mayor, in particular, mentioned that after the completion of construction, we will have a 1000-seat concert hall under the authority of the community, a modern art museum, a separate section for state ceremonial events equipped with new exhibition halls. A new cultural center will be formed, about 30 thousand square meters. meter area, and the developer company will implement construction on the surrounding area of about 4.5 ha, which will be in harmony with the architecture of the area and complex.
Tigran Avinyan also mentioned that that part of the Cascade has been excavated since 2007 and the matter has not moved. in those years, a tender was announced, which was won by a New York company, but the construction was not completed. In recent years, many Armenian architects participated in the announced competitions with their projects, but after long discussions, a decision was made to determine the winner by voting on the "Active Citizen" platform. Two projects were put to the vote, one by the aforementioned New York company and the other by a French company. According to the results of the voting, the winner was the second one, the French one, which was taken by the municipality as a draft version, and a tender was announced, one of the requirements of which was the mandatory inclusion of the already mentioned concert hall, museum and other structures and handing over their ownership to the city authorities, for which 4.5 hectares of adjacent land was allocated for development.
According to the mayor, the minimum investment amount offered by them was 13 billion drams, but the winning company proposed an investment of 20 billion 46 million drams for the central part, in addition, the developer will pay 10 billion 449 million drams to the Yerevan Municipality in the amount of the cadastral value of the land, and will also carry out landscaping works.
In his speech, the mayor also mentioned that the evaluation of the market value of the area of 4.5 hectares to be transferred to the developer was carried out by 3 different companies, the latter estimated it at an average of 22 billion 200 million drams. In numerical form, it turns out that the capital will receive around 30 billion 688 million drams. Of course, the initiative and efforts to solve the decades-long problem belong to Avinyan, but the city authorities would do well to ensure transparency during the construction works, especially for the professional community.
P.S. According to our information, an increase in the rating of Tigran Avinyan can be observed in the social polls of the last months. in the conversations with us, the specialists claim that it is mainly due to the fight against illegal constructions, the return of gardens, sidewalks and yard areas belonging to the residents of Yerevan. Even former critics of the mayor have started to evaluate this approach with public notes.
Details in today's issue of "Zhoghovurd" daily.
