PORDENONE – From an orchard to a parking lot. Right in the centre. And another protest breaks out involving partly the same people who had mobilized for the lime trees of the former fair. Reason for the dispute is a patch of greenery that is located along the way via Marco Polo, right in the city center. A small piece of land behind the building in via Matteotti which houses the Cellina Meduna Consortium. The land had been used by some school children who had made some vegetable gardens, small agricultural experiments and the aim was to make it become a orchard. A patch of green among the concrete.
THE CHOICE
Too good to be true, given that the municipal administration, faced with the fact that there are few places to park in the area, requested and obtained from the Consortium the availability of the area to build a parking lot. Small, about twenty cars, but still useful to help decongest a high-intensity area. Except that the concrete of the parking lot will also eat up that patch of green. And so yesterday morning, May 6, after the photos of Luigina Perosa appeared on Facebook with a bulldozer who was operating inside what was supposed to be the orchard, the alarm was raised among the protectors of the city’s greenery.
WATER PIPES
In reality the works were not those for the construction of the car park, but were actually related to the construction of a network for the aqueduct. There were pipes to lay. In any case, the site has been excavated and the grass effectively no longer exists. In any case, the new park will take the place of the green area and protests have also arisen from some city councilors.
THE RESIDENTS
The first to take a stand is Nicola Conficoni. «The negative reaction of the residents at the sight of the bulldozers in action anticipated the neighbourhood’s hostility towards the planned construction of a car park in place of the orchard, which was only postponed. After having cut down the trees in the former fair, unfortunately, once again the municipal administration intends to sacrifice the greenery. The disputed intervention, however, will not solve the parking problem resulting from the failure to build the multi-storey building in Piazza di Popolo, which resulted in the loss of four million euros obtained with the Pnrr. The bill paid by the citizens for the council’s incorrect planning, therefore, is becoming more and more expensive, demonstrating how thoughtful the legacy left by the former councilor Cristina Amirante, first responsible for the ongoing overbuilding of Pordenone which in the area in issue is leading to the construction of the skyscraper in via Molinari.”
UNCLEAR IDEAS
«When you don’t have real convictions about what you are doing, it happens that you then start other actions that contradict the ones you have just done. Inconsistencies which, although they go almost unnoticed, instead underline a profound concept of extraneousness to the theme and of casual planning”. The 5 Star councilor, Mara Turani, also lasts. «This is the case of the orchard in via Marco Polo, a small green area which in May 2021 had the presumption of being an urban orchard with social, recreational and educational purposes, but also had the presumption of being an aggregation area, made available from the Cellina-Meduna Consortium to the Municipality, free of charge for ten years, only to then, in 2024, see all these wonderful intentions transformed into a nice car park. The organic food promotion for family or collective consumption that we have filled our mouths with now fades miserably in front of the concrete mixer on duty.”
SAD REALITY
«And we citizens who are witnessing the sad epilogue of the story, in addition to the change of councilors for Green – concludes Turani – now take for granted the change of program, the total reversal of the administration’s aims, which first focuses on the orchards (with the the help of the Azzero CO2 association) for a solidarity economy operation and a moment later transforms them into a car park. We haven’t been able to stop the ex-fair frenzy, let alone what we can do for the newly born orchards. We also ignore the intentions of the Dup 24/26 where the strategic objective talks about protecting greenery and recovering green micro-areas and then giving in to a flattering car park in an area where construction sites will have the spotlight until 2026″.
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