Tag: Spoleto

14 October, Umbria 24

The President of Confcommercio writes to the Mayor: “The city is saturated, let’s talk about innovation”, the city councillor “there are no documents registered”

Confcommercio says no to a new potential shopping centre in the historical production site of Panetto&Petrelli, a glorious factory of Spoleto that closed over three years ago. The clarifications from the city councillor Antonio Cappelletti: “No formal request of operational plan or building permit has been submitted so far to our Building & City Planning offices”.

Confcommercio is opposed to a new shopping centre. To make its position clear, the president Tommaso Barbanera wrote a letter to the Mayor Fabrizio Cardarelli in which he expressed his “total dissent to any increase of space for commercial use, the city is already saturated of certain distribution models. There is no necessity at all for new shops, while I would rather like to talk about innovation, human capital, and new consumption trends”. Barbanera remarks also that the new guidelines of commerce are currently under review by the Region, and that they will contain also” the criteria for the establishment of medium- and large-sized businesses. For this reason, I think that evaluating a project of such dimensions in this moment is not ideal since we’ll have shortly a new complete regulation system enabling the City Council to plan accordingly the commercial development of its territory”.

Cappelletti: “There is no document registered”. The debate is inevitable. With a long intervention by the city councillor for the urban planning and the old town, Antonio Cappelletti, replies to the president of Confcommercio: “Let’s clarify that the building is not public property, therefore it’s up to the owners deciding what they want to do with it within the limits of urban planning. The business plan, as Barbanera may well know, is not accessible by the Municipality, but by authorities that made regulations and set that certain commercial structures may be built without being subjected to utmost discretion. Stating that a new shopping centre will suffocate the businesses of the old town is outdated since it’s evident these days that the selection had already happened and proved that specialization and service to locals and non-locals are the way for the few groceries stores still surviving. We can only agree with whom wants to implement in that area fantastic projects to serve the community, but we must not forget that the intervention of a private must have its own economic sustainability and that, if it’s not possible to achieve that sustainability, we risk creating new abandoned areas, as the site in question is already risking”.

Source: Umbria 24

Translator: Cristina Ambrosi