The final project should be presented to the public by March 2019.
A meeting was held in the Split City Administration building on Thursday concerning the master plan for revitalizing Kopilica and the East Coast, i.e., a 300,000 Euro study funded by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), reports Slobodna Dalmacija on September 27, 2018.
It is a document that should, after adoption, be the basis for further project reporting to EU funds and finding private investors.
Sketches of a plan whose final form should, according to the announcements, be presented to the public by March 2019, which should change traffic and the image of Split, was presented to mayor Andro Krstulović-Opara and his associates, as well as representatives of the EBRD, “Croatian Railways”, “Croatian Roads” and the Split Port Authority.
“One of the first jobs I did as mayor was to remove dust from these documents and call on the EBRD to activate the agreements that were ahead of us. Finally, we will get key responses for the development of not only the traffic infrastructure but also the future of the entire city. The enacted Master Plan will be the basis for a necessary change of Spatial Documentation of Split and the entire agglomeration, which will open the space for investment and development.
No politics will make that decision but professionals, and it is going in the direction that the city’s metro station will be at the East Coast, and at Kopilica, there will be a new terminal and a new business center. We want to keep life in the town, rather than it just being centered on tourism. Our goal is to provide a quality life in the center, which is impossible without the quality of public transport,” said Opara.
James Mathews, a representative of the Austrian company “IC Consultant”, whom the EBRD chose to implement the first phase of the project, praised the meeting because, as he said, all the participants showed a tremendous interest in cooperation.
“We have been commissioned to explore the possibilities of economic and infrastructure development for the City Harbor and Kopilica. The meeting was fruitful, we heard the opinions of all participants and their attitudes and concerns, which I am convinced will result in a good solution,” said Mathews, who did not want to talk about the value of the future project because we are still at an early stage, and only in the coming months can we expect to calculate economic feasibility.
EBRD Representative Henry Fletcher expressed his satisfaction that this project was revived and what will be realized.
“At this stage, when we do not yet know how the project will, we cannot say how much we can fund it. Usually, it’s about a third of the value of a project, but in this way, we are attracting investors from the private sector to whom the EBRD provides investment security. But you can be sure that we will not be the ones who will hinder this project,” emphasized Fletcher.
