The ministerial commissioner announced: the renovation of the City Park can pay for itself in this amount of time
The usual political debates were also revived in the latest interview of László Baán, in which he explained, among other things, that the initial fear is not reduced at all by the size of the green area of the park, its built-in structure does not change, and even those who originally opposed it still like the developments, and that in the election, the voters legitimized the continuation of the investment, among other things.
The reporter recalled that at the beginning of the project, judgments brought a total cost of HUF 150 billion for the development of the park, but today the costs are already at HUF 250 billion, even though no more buildings have been built. In relation to the cost increase, László Baán said that the inflation in the construction industry has exceeded 50 percent in total only in the last 4 years, so all investments, including the Liget project, have of course become more expensive than originally planned.
The exact costs of the new National Gallery cannot yet be accurately estimated, the conditional public procurement has yet to be announced and then the market will price the tasks.
In relation to the money, the ministerial commissioner also explained that, in his opinion, the investment will pay off on a purely economic basis in the long run. “According to the relevant study by KPMG
the new cultural quarter that will be created will be able to attract almost a thousand extra foreign visitors to Budapest on average per day, and with this the Liget project will bring back the sums spent on the national economy in 15-20 years
– he underlined. However, the number of visitors is not only increased by foreign tourists, but according to their calculations, by locals as well. “Up to now, 4-5 million people have visited each year. After the renovation, this is expected to increase by around 20 up to a million more people, and it will always be far, far behind the similar intensity of park use in Western Europe,” he explained. As an example, he mentioned London’s St. James Park, which receives ten times as many visitors per year as the City Park.
In relation to further investments, he said what he had already answered to a question from Portfolio, according to which he thinks the government must continue these investments (National Gallery, Hungarian Innovation House) unconditionally. according to him, there was no question of stopping them not even in the light of the fact that, knowingly, the government is trying to save costs by postponing investments. The ministerial commissioner’s statement is particularly interesting in light of the fact that
according to the bulletin published today, the government will withdraw HUF 14.2 billion from the grove project already this year.
However, László Baán previously told our newspaper that he hopes the construction of the National Gallery could start as early as next spring, but the big question is what the real schedule will be in the end.
Cover image source: Liget Budapest Facebook page