By Hovannes Shoghikian
The capital’s authorities admit that they are unable to accommodate to the growing interest of international organizations in having their offices built in downtown Yerevan. At a briefing on Monday Yerevan’s chief architect Samvel Danielian stressed that it is impossible to carry out large construction projects in the city center due to the lack of ‘vacant territories’.
“Only backyard territories remain unutilized, but obviously they are also unfit for large constructions,” he said.
Danielian said the municipality places much importance on the implementation of the so-called community zoning projects.
“The zoning project is the second major document after the master plan and should provide answers to major urban development issues, including the density of construction, creation of green areas, etc.,” he said.
He gave assurances that the realization of the master plan is under close supervision. The power to exercise control is given to the Yerevan Project Institute, which is also responsible for the implementation of the zoning project in the capital’s Kentron community.
All tenders except one announced for the projecting works have already been held. Danielian said that there had been no applications in the tender announced for the capital’s exterior design.
“I hoped that there were specialists who would apply, but unfortunately either they did not meet the deadline for submission or were reluctant to do that,” Danielian said.
The chief architect also spoke about the problem of densely constructed cafes in the city center. He said the situation should have been controlled when the cafes were being constructed. “Naturally, we are not happy with this density of cafes. Had allocations been done properly, perhaps today we would have cafes occupying larger areas and situated at a long distance from each other,” Danielian said.
At the same time, he spoke against artificially cutting down the number of cafes and expressed the opinion that in the future competition will drive most of these cafes out of the market and only a couple of them providing high-quality services will remain.
(Photolur photo)