Could you really object to this?
Dambovita Centre again, and let us make it clear from the outset: we are not in the pay of these people. Lord no, we’re the worst enemies of real estate developers. No, we are not in their pay, but we do like their plans. Very much. If – and it is a major if – the finished project looks anything like the designs, then it will be major asset to Bucharest.
We are aware of the objections of these people, but if you read their manifesto, beyond general nimbyism and some unconvincing legal arguments, there is little more to their objection than the simple fact that “we just don’t like it.” Indeed, one of their arguments, that dust and other detritus from the construction of the project will have a negative impact on the Municipal Hospital across the river, is a joke. The hospital has been a construction site itself for more than a decade.
No, the arguments of the ‘No More Malls’ people do not stand up. They are simply against anything that represents commercialism, or the market.
Yet their most unforgivable error is to draw a link between the lack of green space in the city (a real problem) and developments such as this. The two things are not connected. The current Casa Radio site (on which the Dambovita Centre will be built) is not a park. It is a derelict eyesore. We will be glad to see something better put in its place.
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
@Bucharestian: I’ll inform us on that because the EUR/GBP is going to parity
I am long from 0.8861 yesterday and looking for a re-test of 0.98 in the next weeks of trading but my opinion is that it wlll go even higher, the potential is up to 1.0500. So for the first time in history we’re gonna have a quid lower than the EUR 
Yeap, kindly inform us, Gordon, especially on the latest evolution of the quid. Against the EUR if possible. Please.
@Davin: don’t stay off please! And we like it when you compare Romania to America! Because we want to know how things are like in other parts of the world. It’s great when people can discuss issues through many points of view, that’s why I like this blog and that’s why I searched for it in the beginning. I’d like Gordon to tell us some more about UK too.
Davin, the atmosphere has been much more interesting since you came
Whoever edits and pbuhlises these articles really knows what they’re doing.
I’m going to try to stay off this blog. I know I shouldn’t be comparing Romania to America all the time. The US has major problems if its own and has been quite criminal these last few years with Bush. . . Romania though needs to iron out some basic issues.
@Davin: the rule that you’re talking about together with another rule that forbids honking while inside city limits are adopted here by law too. The fines for breaking these laws go to about 100$ too if I’m not wrong and suspension of drivers license. However… is there anyone enforcing them?!
@Bucharestian: of course that yougsters are behind all stupid things happening in Romania! You won’t see older guys in their 50′s educated on the times of Ceausescu honking people at pedestrian crosses! In June 1990 who was on the streets rioting?! Was it working people that had to earn a living for their families?! No – it was stupid youngsters who put fire to the Police trucks! It’s not old people who have a problem in this country, it’s young people who don’t know how to do anything right and the only thing in their mind is who to f*** next!
@Everyone: democracy had gotten up to their heads in the same fashion as alcohol from wine. From this point of view I would give them example the American society where you have to be competitive if you want to make a living, you have to study and improve yourself. After the old generation will be gone, this is a doomed country. Don’t you speak badly about old Communist people because you won’t have any words left about the post-89 people! We are lucky to still have some quality in this country coming from people that were schooled before 89, but what comes after this generation who are now in their 50′s – may God help us. 90% of the young generation in Romania is totally useless and I know what I’m talking about, HR is my hobby and my second activity after the markets.
I remember that 2 years ago I made a big recruitment campain for a Romanian company – market leader and somewhat a monopoly on the market; the idea was that they had to hire young people who could type fast and correctly because the job was 100% typing on computer. No special skills were required, only to be able to correct their typing mistakes as they wrote. So that we make the selection process even easier for the applicants we decided that typing speed would not be the first criteria so only error correcting remained.
The applicants worked with a software that displayed a text on the right side of the screen and they were supposed to reproduce it [without errors] on the left side of the screen. The text contained general information about the company so it was not hard to understand.
I have to say that from 200 young guys that I worked with personally – only 24 were able to reproduce the text with a single typing error or no typing error. The text was in Romanian, they didn’t know their speed was monitored so they had no pressure, only 24 out of 200 were able to write some text from right to left correctly!
If they can’t even write a text correctly, if they don’t even have the common sense to go over the text again and correct themselves, what can we expect about engineering, medicine, law and hundreds of other domains that a society needs?!?!
Almost 20 years ago, someone (i.e. Silviu Brucan, yeap, the Stefan Gheorghiu Communist guy playing the different when he got sick of it) said it would take some 20 years for things “to settle”. I for one doubt they did settle. As it is a matter of people (i.e. you, me, Andrei, Gordon, the lady selling flowers at the corner, the guy throwing his leftovers through his car window, those honking at you, that lazy waiter etc.), and most of these people only complain, but do exactly what they complain about in others’ doing, I doubt there will be a change anytime soon. I am no god to say it will take 5, 25 or 100 years. As for enforcing rules, Romanian officials seem to have some other priorities of their own. Things might (i.e. might) change once a whole generation will go. However, many of the drivers that honk at you and me are young. As for the police, the so-called “authority” of the state, next time you pass by the Athenaeum, look at the white plastic kiosk in the park in front of it. It hosts a guard belonging to a private company. The guard protects the park. Why? Because the Jandarmeria and the police are useless.
Bucharestian,
I know that the Dambovita Center project has nothing to do with helping out the street children! I just was pointing out the fact that Bucharest has so many issues to deal with at once! It looks as if it will be 25 years or more before this place can be a fully functioning city. The mentality of the people in charge who lack a long-term vision combined with a lack of funds seem destined to plague Bucharest for years to come. Everyday I am here I have to say is a shocking, but exhilarating experience. Today cars honked at me when I was in a cross walk! Again, I reference the US where it is state law to stop for pedestrians in a cross walk. If you don’t and the police see you driving on through you get a ticket of $100 or more! Here in Romania I see that you get a similar fine if you are an old woman and curse in church. Ticketing someone who is wont to kill someone in a cross walk makes sense. Ticketing an old woman a third of the monthly Romanian wage for cursing in church is corrupt, a form of censorship and just plain oddball.
Projects such as Dambovita Center are run by usually private and more rarely public-private developers. These ones have nothing to do with street children, which are a problem of the local administration (city hall and not only) that should work together with NGOs which have plenty of information and projects on the matter. But there is hardly anything more corrupt in this city than the city hall’s apparatus.
Before building the Dambovita Center, why doesn’t Bucharest first deal with its street children, or maybe do both at once?!:
http://www.bombayfc.com/bucharest_uk/
Too bad you didn’t see the architectural plans for the “Dinamo” stadium at Stefan cel Mare underground station! They look at least like the Emirates stadium, too bad they were made about 10 years ago and the development never began, not even today.
That building in the picture is supposed to be the Casa Radio?! I don’t think that anyone has money to even finish the building, not to mention placing the other buildings in the same project.
Oh and have you heard about the late “Dracula Park” project? Something that was supposed to be the eastern rival of Disneyland – Paris, started about 8 years ago when Dan Matei Agathon was minister of tourism, they collected money from people (as selling shares in the project), they changed the location 5-6 times from Sighisoara to Bucharest and back and they ended up never building it at all.
Who the hell will give all that money for Dambovita Center when banks don’t even have money to pay their rents?! I bet you 1$ that in the next 7 years we won’t see anything in regard to that project.
The dust would harm the patients at the Municipal Hospital?! There could hardly be anything in this world capable of harming those patients more than that very corrupt, Orwellian institution, where one has to knock on the elevator door and beg the elevator attendant stop at, say, the 7th floor, to take a wheelchair person aboard. Where bribery is the rule and the night shift ER staff were looking at an epileptic in disgust, saying he was drunk (when he was obviously having an epilepsy crisis).
As for the dust itself, then they shouldn’t have built anything in, say, Abu Dhabi. Or they should have stopped right after the first building.
The sooner they start doing something about that grotesque Communist era carcass (and the dirty plot to the NW of it), the better. I hope they will also begin working on the Esplanada project, to end with that bombardment hit-like area.