neighbors and neighbors of balvanera presented at the Legislature porteña a project to create a pole that encourages the installation of shops and institutions that develop cultural, educational and sports activities with the aim of being able to “take back the street” and rescue a neighborhood taken over by problems of insecurity, prostitution and drugs.
The initiative was elaborated by the neighborhood group and distributed among the deputies and the deputies so that they accompany the creation of the “Cultural, Educational and Sports District”inside the polygon bounded by Belgrano, Jujuy, Rivadavia avenues and Sánchez de Loria street.
The project is the second promoted by Balvanera and its antecedent is the proposal known as “Apple 66”through which they managed to prevent the construction of a micro-stadium in one of the blocks of the neighborhood and, instead, they obtained the sanction of a law that determined the installation of a plaza.
In this case, the idea is to facilitate the establishment of educational, sports and cultural activities, whether for profit or not, through tax exemptions in a scheme similar to that implemented in the remaining Districts that work in the City, such as the Technological and Audiovisual.
For this, it contemplates the benefit for “individuals and legal entities” of the exemption from the payment of taxes on Gross Taxes; as well as that of Stamps, Real Estate and the Lighting, Sweeping and Cleaning rate until 2029.
It also stipulates the adoption by the Bank of the City of Buenos Aires of measures to “implement preferential lines of credit” to promote the establishment of new enterprises and to help in the purchase of “property, construction, removals, recycling and refurbishment of buildings and equipment.”
“We need the neighbor to recover the street, that you can walk quietly at all times, that the empty properties return to be inhabited by families, that the large number of shops closed due to the degradation of the area reopen, among other things. things”, they stated from the Balvanera collective when defining the situation that the neighborhood is going through.
They said that “this reality is so established” that the chosen perimeter, strictly speaking, It is known as the “falopero pole”.
“That is why we brought a new proposal to this Legislature that we hope will be discussed and approved by all of our representatives. We are convinced that Balvanera must recover its splendor and thereby revalue much of its heritage and cultural activities,” they said.
According to the survey carried out by the neighbors, in the polygon included in the project there are seven schools, the headquarters of the Faculty of Psychology of the University of Buenos Aires and the National University of Arts, the Official Publishing House for the Blind, theaters Luisa Vehil and La Otra Orilla and the Salvation Army Building.
Speaking to Télam, Alberto Aguilera, who is part of the neighborhood movement, stated that “We are looking for premises that have been abandoned for decades to be rented again for cultural centers, gyms, bookstores and ateliers, because this is a very cultural area, but it has become complicated.”
Silvia Collin, president of Communal Board 3, which covers the Balvanera neighborhood, supported the initiative considering that “it is a good and manageable project”, however, she maintained that the legislators will be in charge of making it a reality through the vote of the law.
“It is an area with a series of difficulties in terms of security and infrastructure,” he admitted, for which he stressed that “work must be done to improve this situation with a proactive attitude that helps urban coexistence.”
Rubén Hernández Miranda, president of the Luisa Vehil Theater, told Télam that the room was the meeting place for neighbors to develop the proposal “in the face of the need we had to improve the neighborhood and transform it so that people move through it calmly and take advantage of the cultural offers”.
In this sense, he revealed that, if materialized, the initiative would also benefit the theater since the current owners intend to sell the property, against which the members of the civil association that manages the room intend to buy it in order to continue with cultural activity in the neighborhood.
“We all decided to make a campaign to buy the theater and leave it to the neighborhood,” he explained and announced that on July 31 they will hold a festival at the door of the space located at Hipólito Yrigoyen 3131 to raise funds and thus “fight until the last moment” in his defense.
