The operation will allow an annual saving of 1.5 million in rents and another 10 million will be invested in conditioning the building
SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, March 17 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Government of the Canary Islands and the Santa Cruz de Tenerife City Council have signed an agreement this Friday for the Executive to acquire the ‘Auditorio’ building, located in Cabo Llanos, for 22 million euros, and use it to house judicial bodies that are scattered by the city.
The agreement has been signed before the media by the vice president and Minister of Finance, Román Rodríguez, and the mayor of the capital José Manuel Bermúdez, who insisted on “cooperation” between administrations to carry out this initiative.
The building measures more than 17,000 square meters distributed over 13 floors and three basements and also has 200 parking spaces, but it will still require an approximate investment of another 10 million euros, according to Rodríguez’s calculations, to be conditioned for public use. judicial.
By virtue of the agreement it is specified that the Executive will pay five million euros this year and the rest in four annual installments and this operation is added to the one closed a year ago for which it bought, also from the City Council, the so-called Tres de Mayo building, that occupied various government departments, for a total of 31.2 million that have already been paid in full.
Bermúdez has highlighted that this building is located in the “expansion zone” of the city, very close to the future ‘Santa Cruz Verde 2030’ and is an “opportunity” to start the next ‘City of Justice’ projected in Cape Plains.
He has recognized that the current Palace of Justice “was too small” and thanks to this building he will “improve” the service of justice to the citizens and in a “suitable place”.
The Minister of Justice, Julio Pérez, has said that this sale “is very important” to improve judicial services in the city, emphasizing that “it is good” that it is in the center of the city and that the lack of facilities is being corrected that has been accumulating “for decades”.
ALMOST TWENTY DISGREGATED JUDICIAL UNITS
He pointed out that now it is a question of “hitting” the functional plan of the new building, whose main objective will be to integrate the 19 judicial units that are “dispersed” throughout the capital and those that are “narrow” in the current courthouse.
Pérez has not hidden that it will be “a challenge” to organize the interior spaces of the property and that it is adapted “to the height of the new judicial times”, and has expressed his desire that the new units enter service in 2024.
The counselor recalled the “shared effort” by several corporations to compensate for the “damage” that the ‘Las Teresitas case’ caused to the municipal coffers and that resulted in the obtaining of this building and that of Tres de Mayo, although it has not wanted to make direct mention of the government group led by Patricia Hernández (PSOE), who closed the agreement with one of the convicted.
Rodríguez, for his part, has stressed that this agreement improves judicial services in the city and will also allow annual savings of about 1.5 million in rents that are currently paid in various parts of the town.
He has guaranteed that there will be funds to refurbish the building and indicated that the purchase will be finalized in the coming months once the last administrative procedures are resolved.