QCOSTARICA — The Municipalidad de San José (MSJ) – Municipality of San José – intends that the 199 buildings identified as totally or partially abandoned be converted into housing to continue the repopulation of the central part of the capital city.
Diego Miranda, the mayor of San José, made the announcement Tuesday, pointing out that after dark the downtown core of the capital city is without people, a city that “suffers from a depopulated center and disorganized peripheries,” in recent decades.
“After 6:00 pm in the central part of the city, the shops are closed and there are no people, due to the process of moving the inhabitants away from the urban center,” said the mayor.
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“If we work under certain conditions, it is possible that people will want to return to San José,” he added.
Miranda stressed that, if those 199 buildings were converted into apartments, they could house at least 2,700 families.
However, the mayor did not specify in the presentation the cost of the project or the steps to implement it.
Project raises doubts
Experts assured that the initiative is not “a bed of roses” and the municipality must overcome a series of obstacles to make it a reality.
Melizandro Quirós, from the Center for Studies of the Real Estate Financial Business (Cenfi), “one of the biggest complications is how to make the investment profitable for private entities, especially when we are talking about housing for middle-class people.”
A second obstacle is the complexity of projects. According to Guillermo Carazo, executive director of the Federated College of Engineers and Architects (CFIA), “we are not talking about a single project but 199 different ones. Each building needs its own feasibility study, some cannot be converted due to their structure.”
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Regulations and laws
After analyzing the feasibility and profitability, the problems regarding the regulations must be reviewed. Carazo indicated that many of these buildings were created with obsolete regulations, “so, for example, the Electrical Code would require changing all the buildings’ installations so that they adapt to the new requirements.”
The Condominium Law requires a number of common areas and children’s play areas. These buildings would have to be adapted for this. There is also the problem of water in the apartments. The same situation would arise with Law 7600, which requires the installation of elevators in buildings with five or more floors. Finally, fire protection measures have to be taken into account. Allen Moya of the Fire Engineering Department acknowledged that many of these old buildings are not adapted to the new regulatory requirements.
The Path to the Future
Getting people back to San José is part of the Municipality’s plan, “San José 2025-2030 Amor por la Vida- El Camino Hacia el Futuro”, presented by Miranca to a large audience at the National Auditorium of the Children’s Museum.
It is a compilation of the priority projects of the current administration with which the face of the Capital has already begun to change. Some specific investments are:
- Comprehensive renovation of the Zapote Fairgrounds
- Creation of a High Performance Sports Center
- Construction of 10 kilometers of sidewalk per year
- Construction of bus stops
- Improvements to sports facilities at Plaza Víquez
- Intervention of the Hatillo boulevard and Calle Costa Rica
- Renovation of the entire street of Avenida 2, between calles14 and 21
- Expansion of the Avenida Central Boulevard
- Planting of trees on the two downtown boulevards
- Cleaning plan: garbage bags remain on the sidewalks for as little time as possible
- Construction of kiosks in parks
- Lighting of the Metropolitan Park La Sabana
- Remodeling of the Central Park and the Social Guarantees Park
- Construction of the Articulated Living Unit
- Articulated work table for comprehensive care of homeless people
- Construction of the Metro Sur Police building
- Construction of the Police Monitoring Center, thanks to the support of the United States Embassy
- The intervention of public transportation nodes
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