The program of the City of Mérida already has achieved 90% of the goal for this year…
The program to rescue deteriorating façades in Mérida’s Centro already accomplished 90% of its proposed plan for this year, with the improvement of 228 properties and an investment of around 10 million pesos, said the director of Urban Development, Aref Karam Esposito.
The municipal official said they are in the second stage of the program, which will be concluded in the next several weeks.
“This is a program that is applied for the first time, and we have done everything together in a single area, which allows us to be more efficient, given that we are concentrated by sectors and homes, not in an isolated way as had been done in other occasions,” he said.
He said that they now are rescuing 20 façades, and they would avoid properties that cannot be recovered because they are abandoned or they have not been able to convince the owner of the intervention. However, they are looking for agreements that allow them to reach these homes.
“The rehabilitations improve the façades by painting and replace some finishes. We have found on this occasion several properties that for a long time had not been intervened, and we had to remove all the front and replace all the details with the original materials so as not to damage the quality of the property,” he said.
He said that this operation has invested approximately 10 million pesos, which includes labor, materials, supervision and all the necessary implements to carry out the work.
He stressed that this is a permanent program,, since the Centro has between 3,000 and 4,000 properties with historical value. Throughout the 25 years that the program has been in force 950 properties have been improved, while this administration alone has carried out 450, almost 50% of what had done before.
“We have achieved an important advance, but the challenge of maintaining and reviving the Historic Center is not over, so it is very likely that this work will continue throughout the future administrations,” he concluded.
Text and photo: Roberto Ojeda
