between Etna and the sea

May 04, 2024, 2.56pm

6 min read

ACIREALE (CATANIA) – Eight million arrive for the implementation of public and private land development projects included in the pilot project presented by Acireale, but above all a program agreement is born to create a single tourist center between Etna and the sea that is attractive all year round. Thanks to the network and alignment between the Municipalities of the Aci Pact, the Ministry of Business and Made in Italy and the regional Government.

This morning at the City Hall of Acireale, Senator Adolfo Urso, Minister of Business and Made in Italy, formalized the financing decree of the ACI Territorial Pact.

Minister Urso was welcomed by the president of the municipal council Michele Greco and Roberto Barbagallo, mayor of Acireale, the leading municipality, and the mayors of the municipalities of Aci Catena, Aci Castello, Aci Sant’Antonio, San Gregorio and Valverde, the senator Salvo Pogliese and the deputy regional Nicola D’Agostino.

Urso: “A model is born”

“Today a model is born in Acireale. The mayors of the municipalities they managed to create a system and I took care to finance the Aci Pact with the instruments of the Ministry of Business and Made in Italy precisely to make it a model of the truly significant development strategy of the territory.

Never before have there been the conditions for the real development of this territorywhich can count on a government chain, an alignment of satellites that seemed impossible, between local administrations, which have understood that we need to work together, the regional government and the national government.

The Ministry of Enterprise and Productive Development can count on those who know this area well, having lived here for the first decades of my life,” he explained. Minister Adolfo Urso- . This is why today, together with the mayors of the Aci Pact and the representatives of the territory in the Region and the Senate, we wanted to highlight the possibility of taking a further step, a program agreement that holds the Municipalities together, from our coast to productive Etna, with our heart in the ACI, to build a unique, wide-ranging project.

A unique attractive center all year round with religious tourism, seasonal summer and winter tourism, spa tourism with the reopening and relaunching of the Terme di Acireale, golf tourism, conference tourism, possible with the relaunch of the Jonica Pearl , and that he can use the accommodation facilities, I am referring to the Palatupparello, for large events.

It is possible to do what has been done by deseasonalizing the Carnival and it is possible to involve local and international private investors to bet on this territory, so that a unique hospitality tourism hub is created, a model for other territories”.

Barbagallo: “It’s a starting point”

“We are mayors of a territory that has so much potential for developmentresources, energy, but which requires investments.

As mayor of the leading municipality and responsible party, I thank Minister Urso, because by allocating the additional resources it allows us to achieve all initiatives entrepreneurial initiatives contained in the Aci Pact pilot project.

The project proposal, the result of meetings and consultations between the members, was solid and was ranked eleventh out of a hundred applications presented, but paradoxically it was half financed, the new decree has unblocked a situation that effectively condemned the realization of the project .

But the most important thing is that the ACI Pact is a starting point. We mayors have the maturity to think of a single territory, from the sea to Etna and together we will seek further development from this financing.

It is an agreement that starts from this pilot project, together with the Ministry, the Region and private individuals in the coming months we will look for a shared development model for this area, we will try to start again from the abandoned properties, from the financing that we Municipalities already have and we will create an unique project.

Minister Urso and President Schifani will be our interlocutors so as not to waste funding opportunities and create a single global project that looks beyond and turns our territory into an important tourist hub. We mayors and private individuals who want to invest cannot miss this opportunity”, he highlighted the mayor of Acireale Roberto Barbagallo.

With the decree, six million 620 thousand euros were assigned to the six municipalities, one million and 50 thousand euros to private individuals, and 400 thousand euros to the management of the ACI territorial pact office.

Tourism and regeneration

The pilot project focuses on two themes: sustainable tourism and urban regenerationreal general objectives from which the strategic lines were formulated.

All public interventions are inspired by a double matrix of regeneration (sociocultural and economic). In some, the perspective of productive regeneration and the perspective of culture as a “creative industry” prevails. The interventions will allow the incubation of approximately fifteen new businesses in the craft and tourism/cultural sectors. Other public interventions instead have a prevalent social and cultural regenerative nature and will produce services in general for the extended community (residents and guests).

Acireale has entered two important projects: the creation of the Carnival Museum-Laboratory intended for artistic papier-mâché work, lighting and automation and the implementation of improved access interventions for “AciGreenway”, the widening of the roadway with a parking area and pedestrian paths, the lighting, signage and safety works and better access to the eighteenth-century nativity scene.

Minister Adolfo Urso, before the official moment in the council chamber, in which the police, the council and the city councilors participated, wanted to meet the mayors and representatives of the territory in the institutional forums to discuss the next steps.

D’Agostino: “Enormous potential”

“Having established relationships of cordial collaboration, not only institutional, between political representatives of the territory is important.

Our territory has enormous unexpressed potential, it’s a matter of putting in order all the investments we already have and presenting them in an expanded conference, – explained the regional deputy Nicola D’Agostino -.

Minister Urso has promoted a series of events that will put us in a position to have a great project to propose to international investors and ensure that the territory that starts from the Aci sea and reaches Etna is an attractor of investments and a driving force of tourism and economic development that could make the difference.

At the center is the hypothesis of economic recovery and deseasonalisation which will see the Region do its part with thermalism”.

Pogliese: “Good at networking”

“The mayors were good at networking. Creating a system is fundamental for our territory,” he commented Senator Salvo Pogliese-.

I would like to congratulate the protagonists of this qualifying path and with Minister Urso, who is from Acese, knows the potential well and it is thanks to his will that this development project for our territory will be able to start from the ACI Pact”.

Leggi qui tutte le notizie di Catania