Santa Cruz will ask Europe, through the Next Generation funds, for 3.5 million euros to proceed with the rehabilitation of two municipal buildings following the criteria of energy efficiency. It is the Villasegura Building and a property in the area of the Santos ravine.
As was the case with the call in which it achieved 12.5 to rehabilitate 400 homes in Añaza, now it is trying with a new call for European funds for economic recovery after the pandemic, which this time, with energy efficiency as fundamental premise, is aimed at municipally owned buildings.
This was confirmed by the Councilor for Finance and Heritage, Juan José Martínez, who explained to DIARIO DE AVISOS that “this is a call very similar to that of the Añaza homes, in which we were granted more than ten million to improve efficiency energetic. In this case, it is to provide that efficiency to municipal buildings”.
Martínez explains that, “although we can request up to five buildings, we have decided to focus on these two, for which we already have a rehabilitation project”.
According to the mayor of Heritage, those 3.5 million will be requested with the aim, not only of rehabilitating them, but also “doing it with the perspective of using the municipal heritage to put it at the service of activities that generate value and employment in the city ”.
“That is something we want to do with all our assets -he continued- we have to attract companies that create jobs and generate economies of scale in the municipality, and making assets available to these companies so that they can settle is a good way of do it”.
In the case of Villasegura Buildingthe objective is that once finished, become a postgraduate center of the University of La Laguna (ULL), in which it can concentrate its training offer in this educational field”. With respect to the building in the Santos ravine, an old municipal aspiration is taken up again, that of turning it into a technological center. “We want it to be a center linked to companies in the technological field, e-sport, video games, we have to gradually shape it, but first we will request that financing to adapt it and give it those uses,” says Martínez.
The mayor recalls that converting that building into a technology center was one of the projects included in the Tenerife 2030 lines of the Cabildo de Tenerife, and that the current government team paralyzed. “They arrived and paralyzed it, without giving it another use.
It is a property that has continued to deteriorate, that is why we are committed to recovering it. We have a project that was done about five years ago and it will have to be updated. It will be a very powerful commitment as it is linked to digitization and connectivity, preparing it so that the use of the building is not limited from a technological point of view, either as a coworking space, or a nest of technology-based companies”, pointed out the mayor of the Treasury.
Martínez insists that “the priority for us in asset management is the generation of employment and above all for young people, a quality job, fundamentally linked to a degree, whether it is a FP degree, from the university, which allows avoid the flight of talent by generating employment for it”.
old school of commerce
Last October, the City Council declared an emergency for the processing of the insurance works contract for the old School of Commerce due to the imminent risk of the top floor collapsing, without waiting for the start of the comprehensive rehabilitation work.
The dismantling of the top floor was proposed, whose excessive weight was affecting the rest of the structure, something for which, as it is a BIC building, it requires the permission of the Cabildo. Measures that will be provisional until the comprehensive rehabilitation of the building is carried out.
In the case of the building in the Santos ravine, it is a 3,000-square-meter space, whose rehabilitation would cost more than a million euros, according to the figures handled by the Development Society in 2017, when it was already outlined as a center of digital economy promoted then by the Cabildo.
