The project of reconstruction of the City Garden without the Summer Theater was excluded from the agenda of the session

The project for the maintenance and reconstruction of the City Garden Park, a monument of landscape art in Odesa, has been removed from the agenda of the city council session scheduled for February 11.

This was reported by Olga Kvasnytska, a member of the Odesa City Council.

As previously reported by Intent, the controversy of this project was that the territory of the City Garden does not include the Summer Theater. Instead, Odesa residents and a number of deputies noted that the Summer Theater is an integral part of the park. Moreover, the relevant accounting documentation was defended by the community back in 2017 and approved by an expert commission under the Ministry of Culture.

We are talking about the events of 2016-2017, when during the tenth session, the deputies approved the allocation of a land plot on the territory of the Summer Theater in the City Garden.

In June 2017, the developer company received a declaration for the construction of an administrative building with retail and recreational facilities. Subsequently, Odesa activists published a document that showed that 109 trees were planned to be cut down on the territory of the Summer Theater. In addition, they planned to build a shopping and entertainment center on the territory of the Summer Theater. These plans caused outrage among the citizens, and on November 18, Odesa residents held a massive protest against the development of the historic part of the City Garden.

The protests were marked by fierce clashes, and during one of them, the then head of the Main Department of the National Police of Ukraine, Dmytro Holovin, sustained a head injury, and six other police officers were injured.

Eventually, after the scandals and rallies, the cultural and artistic space was reclaimed. It became a venue for concerts, exhibitions, and recreation.

Кирило Бойко