A participatory and constructive meeting, a morning to explore together two strategic projects for the future of Quartu, for an urban regeneration also useful for a repositioning of the city in the metropolitan and regional context: Fornaci Picci and Distillerie Capra are close to coming back to life.
City institutions, the world of business, trade unions, trade associations and stakeholders crowded the Fresco Room of the former Capuchin Convent today, on the occasion of the information day promoted by the municipal administration to provide all the clarifications and useful information regarding the existing projects for the redevelopment of the two now abandoned industrial complexes.
“In the administrative history of the city there have been other moments of discussion, including with businesses and investors, but usually they were opinions, observations, considerations regarding what we were going to do in broad terms in our city. Today’s initiative has a different meaning, it has a different goal, but above all a different cultural profile” commented Mayor Graziano Milia.
“For centuries this city has had a subordinate role to Cagliari, linked above all to agri-food and also to salt production – continued the First Citizen -. Then in the post-war period the development of Cagliari also drove the sudden growth of our city, an urbanization which however did not have an economic interpretation, but above all a demographic one, linked to the reception work to which the city lent itself in place of the capital. A complex, unreadable urbanization, a divided city, which affected various neighborhoods in the area, from the Musicians Area to Pitz’e Serra, and then the coast, places that did not communicate with each other. We posed the problem of making them communicate, of giving the city an identity, in the reading of the sociologist Bauman, or what it wants to become. There is therefore a need to reconstruct roles and functions, identify new ones that are not only of citizen interest but of metropolitan and even regional interest. The two projects, Fornaci and Distillerie, are part of this policy, as are other choices made for the city, such as the new Poetto, the theatre, the willingness to host a student house and an innovative ITS, and many other small things and large, which will allow us to play a role that does not only look at our territory” Milia concluded.
For the projects relating to Fornaci Picci and Distillerie Capra, the Administration followed the most transparent and most coherent path with the new programming tools, obtaining financing of 14 and a half million euros within the “National innovative program for the quality of ‘Living’ (PinQua) as regards the first and interacting with the University so that the second becomes a scientific centre. Projects that attracted an audience of great professionals, attentive and involved, openly satisfied with the path undertaken, as publicly expressed by the Regional President of ANCE (National Association of Building Contractors) Pierpaolo Tilocca.
“The plan for the Fornaci Picci brings together advanced service functions, without losing sight of the strong identity component that it represented, as confirmed by the strong emotional bond of many stakeholders with this former industrial complex, one of the first in Sardinia. And the same goes for the Capra Distilleries, for which discussions with the University of Cagliari are at an advanced stage, which participated with us in a PNRR tender on ecosystems and which is keeping its word of wanting to locate itself in a larger territory : bringing this function to Quartu means giving the city a different role and status” explained the Councilor for Urban Planning Aldo Vanini.
“We want to establish a stable relationship with entrepreneurs, preferably local, but we are open to all those who see Quartu as an opportunity. Because this Administration absolutely wants to be concrete, focusing only on projects that have the possibility of proceeding with an appropriate timing – Vanini explained further -. And it is in fact in compliance with this philosophy that we aim to cut the ribbon at both Fornaci Picci and Distillerie Capra”.
The design studies are already at an advanced stage. They are open to comments, which will obviously have to take into account the context in which they are acting, in which the investment program is publicly guided, as required by some legal provisions, in particular regarding Pinqua, for which several meetings have already been held with the Ministry’s High Surveillance Committee.
“There is a possibility of common growth, in a context like that of Southern Sardinia, which runs the risk of closing itself only in already tested investments, avoiding the challenge of innovation, something different which then generates something else. I believe it is necessary to re-weave a public-private relationship. The invitation is to experience these events as a challenge, in a very difficult Sardinian situation, with the aim of growing and leaving our mark” the final hope of Mayor Milia.
