ArmInfo
No sooner had Armenian ecologists expressed discontent about the construction of a dolphinarium in Yerevan than the Municipality of Yerevan started calming people down with their promises to "improve" the territory.
According to an old tradition, the Municipality's press release focuses on the desperate state of one more park in Yerevan, this time, the Park after Komitas, where actually the dolphinarium will be built. The Municipality enumerates all the shortcomings and then expresses its desire to improve the green zone of the park by launching new construction – a method, the residents of Yerevan are already well-aware of. Mayor of Yerevan Gagik Beglaryan says that a new irrigation and illumination system, as well as roundabouts will be installed in the park. Moreover, the parking area has already been built, which is so characteristic of the Municipality that is very much concerned with reduction of green zones. The residents of Yerevan are sad. By their bitter experience they already know that with the word "improvement" the Municipality of Yerevan conceals destruction of green territories in favor of easy profits from cafes
and restaurants.
One example is the Students Park, a green area turned by Beglaryan into a concrete desert. Beglaryan's reason was allegedly to improve the territory near the Viktor Hambartsumyan Monument. As a result,
the monument has found itself cramped between two ugly cafe-like buildings with no single lawn left nearby.
The public protest has grown into a lawsuit but Beglaryan is not afraid. Now that he has "cultivated" the Students Park he has rushed to "improve" the Komitas Park. We already know what this improvement will end in: cut trees and construction mud.
By the way, the dolphinarium is said to be the project of Ex Mayor of Yerevan Yervand Zakharyan, which means that all attempts to defend the green area are doomed to failure.
September 30, 2010