Mashtots Park upstages Comedy Club: construction is carried out by Gardening CJSC

• Friday, February 17, 15:27

Despite the expectations of the green activities, the construction in Mashtots Park is still going on. 

The activists' hopes put on the Municipality have not been justified either: as agreed, the response concerning the ongoing situation should have been received from the Municipality at 4 pm, but none of the officials appeared. Instead, the Art Manager of the Yerevan Chamber Theater, Ara Yernjakyan, who is also a member of the Yerevan Council of Elders, came to meet the activists.  

Initially the meeting was about to turn into a scuffle with the protesters. Afterwards, however, a normal dialogue was initiated by the efforts of a number of activists. 

In response to Yernjakyan's main argument that all the buildings are temporary, the activists organized a small excursion for him on the construction site, where the "temporary" constructions were for some reason made of bricks and concrete, and one of the constructions was even erected around a tree and a hole was kindly made in the roof for the top of the tree.  

This made the participants raise another voice of protest. The policemen, who had cordoned off the construction site since morning, hurried to calm them down: the "pavilion" made of bricks and concrete will be pulled down in the near future. Afterwards everybody continued doing his business: the police were controlling the journalists and the protesters, and the workers - were doing the welding.  

Armenian MP from Heritage Party Anahit Bakhshyan was also among the protesters. "The documents on construction in Mashtots Park, which have been presented by the Municipality today, only cause doubts and new questions. These so-called pavilions have no right to be in this territory", she said to an ArmInfo correspondent.

Bakhshyan recalled that a movable construction, not a capital building, can be called a pavilion. It is noteworthy that the construction in Mashtots Park is carried out by "Kentron-Kanachapatum" CJSC (Gardening CJSC) under the Municipality of Yerevan. "This is nonsense. The organization, which is actually to
deal with lawns, has received a right to construction", she said. 

As regards the mayor's statement "You can apply to the court if you need", the MP said: "By the time we apply to the court, they will have completed the construction".

The scandal in Mashtots Park arose after the dismantled trade pavilions mysteriously had "moved" from Abovyan Street to the public park near Mashtots Avenue. According to the official version, the pavilions have been moved in line with the zoning of the center of the city defined in the general outlay.   

For their part, the green activists say that in reality the given development runs counter to the general layout, and the Old Yerevan project has never been put to public hearings. The meetings of the activists with Mayor of Yerevan Taron Margaryan and Chief Architect of Yerevan Narek Sargsyan have given no results.