Thessaloniki: Change of “float” by the municipality for the wooden deck in Nikis Street

By MARIA KOUZOUFI

Change of course by the new administration of the municipality of Thessaloniki regarding the project of extending the old beach of Thessaloniki towards the sea with the construction of a wooden deck on piles.

“For financial reasons we have to proceed differently”, as said the deputy mayor of Technical Works, Environment and Sustainable Mobility, Prodromos Nikiforidis, speaking to “TyposThes”considering that with the new solution, the wooden deck can be built at the end of 2026. Essentially, we ensure both the study and the construction through NSRA, he says among other things.

Last Monday’s municipal council decided by a majority vote not to ratify the result of the tender regarding the assignment of the studies for the project. The matter will go to the tender committee who will decide if this is correct and then it will come back to the city council to proceed with the new process.

The history

As Mr. Nikiforidis mentions, the municipality of Thessaloniki about 3 years ago held an architectural competition for ideas for the wooden deck, which resulted in some results. He states, however, that “it does not enable the project to proceed to study. That is, it is something exploratory, so we lost two years to have a result that was judged by a committee and which we cannot proceed with. Then, as he continues, the previous administration of the municipality decided to hold a tender for the assignment of the study of the wooden deck. This competition resulted in the assignment of a team of scholars to do the study. So it did not have a competitive process in terms of the subject but in terms of the study group and the financial offer. The estimated fee budget for this study was 2.8 million euros – of course there is always a discount – which means that the municipality had to pay a large amount for the study which would be around 2 million euros, as the Deputy Mayor explains. However, the municipality only had an amount of approximately 450,000 euros from the Ministry of Tourism, so the planning of the study said that the money would be found in 2025-26 and then the study would be completed.

“The project would not be done before 2029”

“So we would have to wait until the end of 2026 to have a comprehensive study which we would then tender to do the project. As you understand this means that the project would not be done before 2028-9 because there is the tendering time which can be long if there are appeals while there is also the construction time,” he adds.

In January 2024 the Regional Mayor K. Makedonias and the new mayor discussed the issue and Mr. Tzitzikostas agreed, as explained by Mr. Nikiforidis, that the construction should proceed with another process, with the process of the construction study competition for which a preliminary study is required. In this case, the municipality will use, according to Mr. Nikiforidis, the funds of the Ministry of Tourism to do the preliminary study and from then on “the tender will be held immediately” “It can be done even in 2024 and the contractor of this design-build tender, the design is further advanced and construction begins,” he says. According to this scenario, at the end of 2026, the wooden deck may have been built, as Mr. Nikiforidis points out.

“What we have done is to say that the first solution is not financially beneficial to us because the municipality will have to find a lot of money which it does not have in order to complete the study from the scheme that was chosen. For financial reasons, we have to proceed differently from the moment the Region and the NSRF will finance a large part of the study and after the construction”, as he points out.

The administration of the municipality requests that the solution agreed with the region be chosen in order to have a faster implementation but also so that the municipality does not pay approximately 1.5 million euros in additional money that it does not have.

It is something that cannot be disputed because we actually ensure both the design and the construction through the NSRF, emphasizes Mr. Nikiforidis.

The municipality is expected to request an update of the study that had emerged from the architectural competition of ideas in order to be feasible, sustainable and what the city needs.

The scholars who had won the first prize in the architectural design competition proposed two spatial zones that run parallel to the entire sea front of the old beach. The zone of the extension and the zone of the existing sidewalk-sidewalk are distinct, so that with their different quality characteristics they offer different experiences and feelings to their users.

The opposition

The main opposition faction “Yes in Thessaloniki” accuses the Municipal Authority for a sketchy way of operating in a series of issues with its announcement. Especially on the issue of the wooden deck, he points out that the issue was led to an unscheduled withdrawal “since the Administration neither proceeded to validate the appointment of a temporary contractor, where the matter had reached the previous Administration wanted, nor was it ready to present a complete proposal, despite only intentions and assurances, for the recourse to a new study-construction method with a new tender”. “What is omitted is that even this method presupposes the existence of a preliminary study that could begin immediately with the validation of the result of the competition that had been completed by the previous Administration. The 43% discount offered by the prospective contractor scheme of architects for the final total cost of a study that would make the project ripe for inclusion in financing (NSRP) and construction within 2024 was also kept silent. And the question raised for the knowledge of the administration is: how can a project be included and financed in the NSRF program without the existence of even a preliminary study, if not an implementation study?”, points out the faction of former mayor Constantinos Zervas.

The “freezing” of the development of the beach deck project is proposed because “it will save the municipality money that it will not have and because there is a promise to finance its design and construction, a process that so troubled the city in the case of the Metro, he pointed out from the side of the faction “Thessaloniki For All” led by Spyros Pegas.

*Photo. file

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