The story is “ancient”, at least for a city that is not yet one hundred years old. The seventy-five hectares that extend behind the Latina marina have for decades been at the center of the programs of the municipal administrations that have followed one another in the Pontine capital, and from five years to another they return to the fore taking different forms. It happened the last time two weeks ago when councilor Gianluca Di Cocco relaunched the idea of creating a “twin” reservoir of Lake Fogliano in the commission. It’s not new, it’s a project from ten years ago, one of many that affected that enormous green space between the Latina sea and the coastal road.
The area
An area in which, since the post-war period, many have cultivated ideas, projects and above all dreams. A sort of goose that lays golden eggs which over time has taken different forms, none of which have materialised. Sorry, one yes, the first. Yes, because when a drilling commissioned by Enrico Mattei’s Eni found in Capoportiere not the gas that was hoped for, but an underground river of sulphurous water, Commendatore Salvatore Cimaglia, sole director of Siam, immediately had clear ideas. He obtained a fifty-year concession and created the Terme di Fogliano. It was 1953, the years in which going to the spa was a deep-rooted habit for Italians, Fiuggi, Montecatini, Chianchiano became historic brands. But it didn’t last in Latina. The Municipality obtained the revocation of the mining concession from the State, but the public company that inherited the exploitation of that resource never managed to open a spa.
Terme di Fogliano, judgment requested from 14 people for the bankruptcy, the Prosecutor’s Office: «Dissipated assets»
However, he did two things. One entrusted the task of designing the spa and at the same time approved an urban planning variant which transformed those agricultural lands into a treasure. «Out of the total 75 hectares, 24 of which are restricted to a special conservation area and cannot be built on, 300 thousand cubic meters are planned – the then councilor Francesco Castaldo explained years ago – of these 30% could also be residential, net of the volumes residential buildings already built”. And therefore villas, villas, apartments next to hotels and service structures.
These figures are enough to understand the interest. But the public company that owns the area and the volume was declared bankrupt. The Prosecutor’s Office has accused the former directors of fraudulent bankruptcy but everything is still pending at the preliminary hearing. The last hearing last month and another postponement to next November.
But let’s get back to the projects. The first to mix things up with a certain amount of visionary thinking was Ajmone Finestra. The then mayor with the city manager Roberto Tana imagined building a large theme park on those lands, he said that a Canadian company was intending to make the investment. It was 1999. Nothing happened. Years passed. In 2015 a Turin company returned to the office. He presented a project: a large artificial reservoir, surrounded by greenery and nature trails, interspersed with villas and buildings. Soon after, the Arabs appeared. In Kuwait City a project was presented which for years could be viewed online in which there was talk of 800 properties and even a separate beach for men and women. It was never clear whether it was a hoax or not.
At the same time, during the electoral campaign which then led to the first election of Damiano Coletta, the program of the Latina Bene Comune citizens disintegrated again by proposing to take over the area from bankruptcy and donate it to the Ministry of the Environment so as to expand the boundaries of the Circeo National Park . Nothing was done about this idea either. The area is still there. The “twin” reservoir of Lake Fogliano has been talked about again: we will see the developments.
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