The mayor of La Laguna, Luis Yeray Gutiérrez, and the vice-president of the Government of the Canary Islands, Román Rodríguez, formalized yesterday the agreement by which the regional Executive gives the City Council the use of the old bus station of San Benito, which has been in use for years disuse and where the Consistory will locate the new Local Police station.
Román Rodríguez stated that “it was a question of concretizing a commitment that we talked about more than a year and a half ago, which was to cede this strategic space, in disuse, to the City Council of La Laguna for the provision of a key service such as security”.
The vice-president explained that the delay in signing the agreement was due to the fact that the Government Health Department “intended to use this land for a sanitary facility but alternatives have been sought and, therefore, now we are finalizing the transfer of this land to the City Council, which has a great plan for this space, such as the Local Police station”. He also stressed “the value of institutional cooperation” to carry out projects like this. For his part, Luis Yeray Gutiérrez celebrated that it was “a very important day” for La Laguna and thanked the personal involvement of Román Rodríguez and his team, “who have made it possible for us to sign this loan today after a long time and work ”. “In 2019 we said that we wanted to project here the realization of a historic demand for La Laguna, to have a police station at the height of this city,” he recalled.
The mayor announced that in this year’s budgets there is already an item of 40,000 euros to “immediately allocate to Gestur to carry out the project” to reform the building and for which “we first needed to have ownership of this land ”. In addition, the City Council has planned an investment of 1.1 million euros in three years for the remodeling of this space. The building occupies a plot of 7,150 square meters (with 1,022 built), whose heritage value is more than 2 million. The transfer of use of the property is materialized for a period of 30 years. Subsequently, the mayor explained that the project for the future headquarters of the Local Police will take into account the program of needs transferred at the time by the Security area. A part will be covered with the current building, especially with regard to the office area and citizen attention, while the incorporation of several floors under the current parking lot for internal uses of the Police is also contemplated.
new health center
Asked if the City Council had ceded any other land to the Government in exchange, Luis Yeray Gutiérrez explained that “different alternatives were offered to the Government Health area, finally the space they have accepted is a municipally owned plot that is on Avenida de Los Menceyes, on the Ronda road”, where the future Specialized Care Center (CAE) that the Government proposed for the space of the old San Benito station will be located.
And regarding the future of the car parks that currently occupy said station, the mayor recalled that the City Council has recently set up a plot on the nearby Camino de la Villa with a capacity for 60 spaces that are already in use, “so that, once they start the works, we can have this alternative”, he indicated.
