Originally called the Reina Building, because of the street on which it is located, and renamed Almacenes Ultra because of the large store that is located on its ground floor, the building that bears number 109 of the central avenue has become a danger for residents and passers-by. If inside there is a lack of water supply and leaks in the roofs abound, outside the threat is provided by the cracked balconies that overlook one of the busiest areas of Havana.
“I didn’t even look up, but after the landslides of the last few days due to the rains, I’ve started to look and this is a danger,” detailed this Monday morning a woman who was waiting in line for the bus in the park El Curita, a few meters from what was once one of the most famous and visited stores in the Cuban capital. The reason for her words is the balcony that she overlooks the entrance to the Ultra Warehouses, cracked after the passage of years without maintenance.
The construction, which was once the envy of all those who passed in front of its facade art Deco, It has been mired in disaster for years. In May 2022, a fire broke out in an apartment on the third floor and affected several adjoining houses, but that was just one more step in the descent towards the abyss of the deterioration that the building has experienced for decades. The problem of the scarce and sporadic supply of water seems to be what most despairs its inhabitants on a day-to-day basis.
The soot that has been falling for years on the facade gives the entire construction a musty appearance, which in some parts still retains traces of the paint that once covered its walls.
“People believe that if you live above a store you have everything solved, but this is a disaster,” says Humberto, a resident there until a few months ago when he decided to move with his daughter to another neighborhood further from the center. “Yes, in Reina 109 I was a few minutes from Central Park and a jump from the Malecón, but what is all that if when I got up I didn’t even have water to wash my face. Very nice on the outside but a nightmare on the inside,” he details. this diary.
The soot that has been falling for years on the facade gives the entire construction a musty appearance, which in some parts still retains traces of the paint that once covered its walls. The cracks in two of its balconies seem to deepen with the passing of days and the humidity left by this week’s downpours. Beneath it passes a student in her uniform on her way to a nearby school, an old woman with a bag hanging from her arm and a young man with headphones who moves his hand to the rhythm of the music she listens to.
Everyone is oblivious to the fact that a tragedy is brewing a few meters above. The same one that some have already seen from the tail of the bus, because the angle they are at allows them to see the terrifying perspective. “This is how misfortunes happen,” says a woman. She says it a few meters from the place where a month ago the Saratoga hotelalso very close to a collapse in a house at the back of the store End of the centurywhich left several families homeless, and a breath away from the collapse of a balcony in the San Miguel street.
A sequence of landslides of facades and roofs has redoubled the attention of Havanans when they walk through the streets. Some choose to look higher to avoid the greatest dangers, others walk the streets avoiding sidewalks and doorways, risking their lives with vehicles. A considerable part reduces their outings outside the home, but in their own home there can also be danger. Like in the Ultra Warehouse building.
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