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Esselunga will build a conference centre in Turin. 8.7 million for the former Westinghouse
15 September, La Stampa
Unless a turn of events, the deal is closed. And it ended up well, at least for the administration of Turn which believes that the city needs a bigger conference centre. Last Thursday, Esselunga took over from Amteco&Maiora the assignment to implement a trade fair in the former Westinghouse area. Esselunga bought the property for 8.7 million.
The plan includes a conference centre featuring 5 thousand seats, a shopping centre for a surface of 4 thousand Sq m and other facilities. It will have to sit well with vice Mayor Guido Montanari, who has said many times to not agree with the operation; while Mayor Chiara Appendino is relieved: 9 billion euro will be certainly useful, plus she won’t have to deal with a disused area with no plans for the relaunch.
Unpaid Instalments
The agreement was entered at the end of 2016 with Amteco&Maiora, the company that won the call for tenders in 2013 for 19.7 million. However, the works never started because the company didn’t comply with the terms. In fact, after having paid 8 million at the end of 2016, the company should have also paid the remaining 11,7 by January 2017. It never did. The company asked instead of a payment extension up to the middle of this year, but neither this term was respected. As a result, the City cashed only 3 million, deciding to end the agreement.
Now Esselunga took over, a partner of Amteco, which should have built the shopping centre. Esselunga will implement the conference centre and the hypermarket. The Turin administration is safe. There is a criminal investigation pending on the Westinghouse area, for which also Mayor Appendino has been investigated. The charges are false accounting for 5 million: a bond that wasn’t correctly returned to the company Ream, according to the public prosecutor’s offices. Ream had a pre-emption right on the area. The Turin administration reached an agreement with Ream, terminating a contract that might have been revived since the insolvency of Amteco and no guarantees had been requested on the amount to cash. The agreement with Ream concerned the construction of the conference centre only, not the commercial area. The City would have cashed 6 million less, always better than nothing.
The NovaCoop appeal
The administration rejected the NovaCoop option, risking being accused of fiscal damage. The interest from Esselunga solves (almost) everything. The appeal by NovaCoop on the 2013 call for tender won by Esselunga is still pending. However, the GDO leader has just got the green light to build a 10-thousand-Sq m shopping centre on the former Alfa Romeo area in Via Botticelli. The original plan implied the creation of apartments for a surface of 8,500 Sq m, which has been reduced to 2,500. There will be fewer houses but no changes concerning the commercial surface. Perhaps, NovaCoop will pay attention to this detail.
Source: La Stampa
Translator: Cristina Ambrosi