The partial rescue of a ‘ghost parking’ in Barcelona
Neighbors with almost nowhere to park and a underground car park with 176 spaces that has not been opened for a decade. This is the paradox with which the residents of Baró Tower (Nou Barris)fruit of a convoluted history. The original sin of this parking ghost is the extinction of the promoter of the building, the public company Regesa. When it went bankrupt, the property located in the Plaza dels Eucaliptus was closed tightly despite behaving at a cost of 2.7 million euros to public areas. An absurdity that a year ago the Barcelona City Council tried to put an end to with the rescue of 176 places, which are still closed today. For much longer? Not according to the consistory, but the chosen method is not liked by the neighbors.
As explained by those responsible for the Barcelona Municipal Institute for Housing and Rehabilitation in the last Consell de Barri, the intention is to make a adjustment to floor -1 and offer for rent 56 spaces (two of them, with reduced mobility) facing February or March. As municipal sources have explained to EL PERIÓDICO, the opening “in phases” seeks to “expedite the opening without having to wait for everything to be recovered.”
In fact, throughout these months the administration will not only have to finalize the change of ownership, but also legalize the elevator and modify the contracted electrical power. In addition, you must register the supplies, insure the farm and hire the maintenance, cleaning and firefighting teams.
The neighbors don’t trust
Despite the announcement of the consistory, the entities of the Zona Nord de Nou Barris are wary: “There is no movement, we pass by here quite often and the only works there are those of the CAP; It seems that they have now thought of the squares because they are in the run-up to the campaign and they have to show that something is moving around here”, denounces the president of the AVV Ciutat Meridiana, Filiberto Bravo, sarcastically. And, in any case, as added by the vice-president of the AVV Torre Baró, José Martínez, “these fifty spaces are totally insufficient and the only request of the residents is not fulfilled either: to reserve 15 spaces so that they can be used rotating and thus give a place to park for the users of the CAP”.
The Neighborhood entities refuse to establish fixed rents to use the spaces and would prefer a free parking model more in tune with the economy of one of Barcelona’s neighborhoods that survives on lower per capita income. On the contrary, the consistory defends that “the places cannot be free because their maintenance has costs to cover”. In any case, the same council opens the door to study “the possibility that some of the places can be for fraction of timeto facilitate parking for people who have a medical visit in the CAP”, although “they do not foresee” offering this option immediately.
The mission impossible to park on the street
“Day after day we are more suffocated, every day they take away more spaces to park on the street and here the buildings barely have underground floors, at 8:00 p.m. here there is no one who can park and cars are already beginning to be seen on the sidewalks, at pedestrian crossings… ”, denounces Bravo. “It is impossible, before at least use two open fields behind the buildings in the square, but since they have begun to build two housing blocks, we have already been unable to leave the car there”, adds the president of the AVV Torre Baró, Micaela Rodríguez.
It is for this reason that the neighborhood associations would prefer that the current parking ghost It will be allocated entirely to the patients and professionals of the CAP and to the users of the metro and train stations as a park ride. “For this reason we say that the 15 rotating positions are our minimum request,” summarizes Martínez, who criticizes the “lack of information and constant dialogue” from the City Council. In case of not complying, the AVV Ciutat Meridiana warns that the residents could attack the rest of the squares that will remain, for now, buried: “For us it would be a solution to open them and get in there, because what we want is for it to normalize this once and for all.”
It was not the only sin of Regesa
It should be noted that the 176 squares that the City Council has rescued from the remains of the public company Regesa are not the only ones under Plaça dels Eucaliptus. There are another 32 places that were reserved for the tenants and workers of the block of the Solidarity Foundation of the University of Barcelona. These, however, will still not be able to use them.
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A contradiction to which must be added the fact that Torre Baró will also have throughout this last decade commercial basements and boarded-up apartments promoted, in their day, by the public administration. However, as of December 2022 There is already a project for two of these premises: one will be a space for young people from the neighborhood and the other will house a fixed point for ambulances at the end of 2023, to give a faster response to emergencies in the entire northern sector of Barcelona. “We hope that the youth center will be ready by 2024, because if the parking lot is so run down it is because the kids have not found any alternative space for themselves and some have dedicated themselves to breaking the door and making bottles inside,” explains José Martínez .
Finally, the council has also begun to work to make available to the public housing stock the 13 floors also empty of one of the adjacent blocks of Regesa. As they have detailed, three already have a successful bidder, two are in the hands of the Consorci de l’Habitatge de Barcelona to award them and another eight are still boarded up. As the municipal officials themselves admitted in the last Consell de Barri, the whole process will be “a bit long”.