AUF million-dollar project in Roosevelt Park: Canelones requests endorsement from MGAP and the Board

This is the last formal requirement before finalizing an idea that has been brewing since the beginning of the period, after an informal contact with the former captain of the team, Diego Lugano, and the subsequent call from the general secretary, Francisco Legnani, to Matías Pérez, a member of the Executive Committee of the AUF, to formally start the talks.

The authorities of the institution, headed by its president Ignacio Alonso, had toured the site in February of last year, and both parties had expressed their enthusiasm to recover a depressed environment with a sports proposal. The association is looking for an exclusive infrastructure for the various disciplines promoted by FIFA –such as beach soccer and indoor soccer–, as well as a space reserved especially for Women’s Footballas he learned The Observer.

The AUF calculates a global investment of US$ 2,310,000 to be executed in 16 monthsaccording to the route sheet delivered to the commune, and to which it agreed The Observer. The application signed by the AUF Development Director, Gustavo Bañales, and the Executive Director, Victoria Díaz, includes the renders that reconstruct the projected facilities, which will bear the name of Technical Development Center.

What will the complex consist of? The current fields used by the Estudiantes del Plata club will be transformed into three soccer fields, one of them 90×60 meters long with synthetic grass, suitable for soccer and hockey. The fields will be cleared by parking lots for the entrance of the buses.

Technical Development Center of more than US$ 2 million projected by AUF for Roosevelt Park

At the end closest to Giannattasio – the section in question is between the avenue and the boulevard – the AUF projects a technical development center with classrooms for the VAR referee training, as detailed by the director of the Roosevelt. Next to these facilities, next to the grassy fields, a beach soccer field. The AUF promised to organize two annual beach soccer festivals there, all with its human resources, according to the proposal sent to Freitas.

The Yamandú Orsi administration intends to grant the area of ​​more than 38,000 square meters on loan for 20 years and requires certain compensation: one of them is that the perimeter of the property has “non-opaque enclosure”, allowing “the non-fragmented spatial reading of space”.

The commune also requests “security measures” for the area, reforest the entire environment, to revitalize the road that connects the boulevard with Gianattassio –with pavement maintenance and lighting– to “privilege the vehicular and pedestrian link with the avenue”. In another order, the commune requires that the synthetic grass field contemplate drainage and perimeter fabric, as well as the obligation to carry out at least three “annual community activities in relation to children’s soccer,” according to the technical report that compared the proposal. of AUF.

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Technical Development Center of more than US$ 2 million projected by AUF for Roosevelt Park

In addition, the institution must take charge of a “playful sports space” on the other side of the road, with “equipment for community recreation”, and a 35×65 meter multifunctional court for “practice soccer, tennis soccer, 3×3 basketball “, among others. It is that the Orsi administration plans to turn the paved platform that is now in front of the courts into a skating rink, and has already generated parking between both spaces.

“There we want to consolidate an important center for sports activities that this entire area of ​​the metropolitan area does not have. This is associated with an aerobic circuit among the trees that we are working with runners. That’s where the great runners, the marathons, will start. It is to recognize the vocation of the place and develop it”maintained the hierarch in relation to the so-called “fraction 4”, where the project will be installed.

Another counterpart of the administration to the AUF is the obligation to install a wooden floor in the sports hall municipal located on Camino Carrasco, “and help in the development twice a month of a program of Futsal Schools for both genders, with the presence of players and professionals of the discipline,” according to the reply of its technical team.

Intendancy of Canelones

Plans of the Municipality of Canelones for the Landia area, next to the sports complex designed by AUF

A contested park

Roosevelt Park has starred in recent decades comings and goings between neighbors, authorities and investors interested in their properties. Enrique García, heir to the García Lagos family who in 1917 donated the immense 370-hectare land to the State, left no more than 10 years ago to block the Marcos Carámbula administration for giving rise to Juan Pedro Damiani’s project to build a stadium of Peñarol in the place, and threatened to go to Justice for not respecting the statutes.

That aurinegro longing for the area would be shipwrecked four years later after having been relocated three times. Years later, the neighbors raised a cry in the sky before the installation of Landia and the Blu Park amusement park in the sector closest to the Géant, which they came to take –unsuccessfully– to trial. Orsi “is privatizing the park,” they accused.

Without going any further, the member of the Roosevelt Park Neighbors Commission for All and of Fauna Libre Uruguay, Nicolás Díaz, made it clear –in an interview with Metropolitano– his opposition to the aspirations of AUF for the old properties of Landia, before the first Alonso’s tour in February 2021.

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Technical Development Center of more than US$ 2 million projected by AUF for Roosevelt Park

“The public park is in everyone’s interest and opinions are very important to us. We have a participatory space with the neighbors for all the projects. The park is very clean, it is not dirty,” defended the current director Freitas. “It has a problem with the fact that it is used to dump furniture and construction debris, but the mayor has been working to prevent this from happening,” he said.

The hierarch pointed out that they presented the new AUF project to the councils of Paso Carrasco, Colonia Nicolich and Ciudad de la Costa last month, and “there was significant support from local political representatives.” “I think it is a very interesting project and that it closes a lot because of its counterparts. And we complement that with public space. Socially, it seems to me a project that can be well accepted”he declared.

Lagoon and golf club

“The park has had a master plan approved for many years, and within this framework we are promoting a change of pace in what we call the operational agenda of the park,” said Freitas, who called for “community work” with neighbors, societies of landscapers, the University of the Republic, among others.

A few weeks ago, a tender was closed to bring little boats to the lake in the fraction between Avenida de las Américas and Camino Carrasco, with a system similar to that of Parque Rodó –in fact, the private one that won is the same, Mundo Pedal–. The municipality and the mayor’s office worked weeks ago to remove the algae accumulated for years: “We recovered the edges of the erosion and now the mirror of water is clean,” Freitas stressed.

Ines Guimaraens

José Freitas, director of Parque Roosevelt

Also a few days ago the Departmental Board approved the installation of a driving -training field- of three hectares for the Uruguayan Golf Association, in the “empty” that in his opinion the Blu Park after closing.

“All the projects carry important counterparts to be linked to the management of the park and generate social benefits. Golf is not a popular sport, and it is interesting for us that they access it. The Association will participate in the forestry program, it will provide structure for irrigation and an agenda of social scholarships to give classes with neighborhood organizations,” he said.

Freitas stated that they seek to “associate with non-profit associations that integrate clubs and federations and find a place in the park to build the infrastructure that the country does not have.” The Handball Federation is also going to be installed in the area, while the commune intends to make the classic dressage arena a center for events, and roof part of the facilities.