The land where it will be built had been sold to Veritas by the City and sold again in 2011 to Garage San Marco at a time of financial trouble.
By Enrico Tantucci
18 June 2020
VENEZIA. There was once a municipalized company controlled by the City – Veritas, in trouble at the time, around 2009 – to which the City, which could not directly support it, sold the land adjacent to its office in the of Piazzale Roma area, to help the company, which could monetize the land.
In July of 2011 Veritas sold the land for several million Euro to the company that owns the neighboring Garage San Marco so it could, thanks to this, realize the “doubling” of the garage with the addition of around 500 parking spacesit had been planning: the preliminary design for the expansion of the garage was ready months ago, and was presented to the City in October.
This is the “public interest” at the base of the preliminary design of the new Garage San Marco, which has only now arrived, almost ten years later, and which was discussed yesterday in Commission, in view of the City Council’s approval.
In the meantime the designer has changed: it is no longer the engineering company Favero and Milan, but the Mario Cucinella Architects studio, part of one of the new “firms” of Italian architecture. But most of all the “headache” of the piezometric tower from the turn of the last century, which rises precisely in the middle of the area planned for the parking deck and therefore must be demolished, even if Maurizio Crovato (Lista Brugnaro) hopes to save the cupola.
It is striking how the construction of the new garage goes exactly in the opposite direction from that of redirecting private traffic from Piazzale Roma preached in recent years, with direct access to the City garage at Ponte Libertà, no longer needing to “circumnavigate” Piazzale Roma (Nicola Pellicani, PD). Possible risks to the water in the still functioning Napoleonic cistern in the area have been pointed out, seeing that the new Veritas lifting station on Tronchetto has not yet been built, which also threatens a complaint to the City (Renzo Scarpa of Gruppo Misto).
For his part, the Superintendent of Urban Planning Massimiliano De Martin has complained about the lack of the creation of a new garage in Marittima which would also serve Venetians, but he has still reiterated the usefulness of the new parking deck, which according to the Director of Transportation Loris Sartori will not create big problems with traffic crowding at Piazzale Roma and Ponte della Libertà. And De Martin has recalled that if the new garage is built it is because another Administration sold the land to Veritas, who sold it to San Marco. And frankly, it’s hard to blame him.
Source: La Nuova Venezia
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