The founder of the public association “Civic Committee for Fighting Illegal Constructions and Defending Human Rights” Mihai Balan warns that the company that manages the shopping center (Unic) situated at the intersection of Ștefan cel Mare și Sfânt Blvd and Ismail St intends to purchase the public lot on which the store is situated and the adjoining area at a normative, not market price. As a result, the municipal budget will sustain great losses. In a news conference at IPN, Mihai Balan said the municipality issued the company with a permit for building annexes in the area adjoining the shopping center.
According to Mihai Balan, the Unic shopping center that has been privately owned since 2016 is located on municipal land. Since this was privatized, the store’s administration has requested the local public authorities to issue permits for constructing annexes on an area of over 20 ares, which is also public property. But the business entity does not have a lease agreement, ownership rights or any other land relations with the local authorities. Until recently, the business entity met with refusal, but a building permit was ultimately issued to it last summer.
If the construction is authorized, even if this is located on a publicly owned lot, the owner of the construction can purchase the land at a normative price, which is 10-20 times lower than the market price, stated Mihai Balan. “This way, the local public authorities favored the business entity in the purchase of the land from under the erected buildings and the adjoining land. So, they gave him an additional reason to benefit from a price that is approximately 20 times lower, even if about 20 business entities during the past five years requested the CMC to organize tender contests and to offer that land to the company that will submit the highest bid,” noted the founder of the Civic Committee for Fighting Illegal Constructions and Defending Human Rights.
In the same news conference, Anatolie Kovalyov, chairman of the public association “Union of the Centru Underground Passage Legal Entities”, said the municipal authorities set the goal of removing the lessees from the underground passage situated at the intersection of Ștefan cel Mare Blvd and Ismail St ignoring the fact that some of them have taken care of this passage for 28 years without the City Hall lending a hand. The business entities are ready to repair the passage. They presented a reconstruction project, but the local authorities are not interested in this. The meeting with the mayor of Chisinau was formal and the mayor showed no wish to understand their situation.
Alexandru Lisnic, the manager of a company that operates in the underground passage, said the authorities didn’t think about the people who work at the shops in that passage and what will happen to them.
Alexei Churyumov, the manager of a company that runs selling units in the underground passage located at the intersection of Russo St and Moscovei Blvd and in the passage near the Railway Terminal, noted that they were informed by the City Hall to vacate the places within five days even if the contracts with the municipality are valid until 2024. He reiterated that the business entities are ready to become involved in the renovation of the underground passages.
