By Stefanos Evripidou
THE MAIN reason houses in the old part of Nicosia are either uninhabited or left to collapse is because they are too highly priced, said Nicosia’s municipal engineer, Faidon Nicolaou, yesterday.
The fact that Nicosia remains a divided capital combined with the inflated prices asked for old listed house does little to attract house buyers to the old town, he maintained.
The dilapidated state of the old town came into the spotlight after a listed house in old Nicosia collapsed last Friday. “The municipality declared the house dangerous in 2001 and asked the owner to make the necessary repairs. When he failed to do so we made an invitation for the offer of tenders and had the house temporarily repaired,” said Nicolaou.
The owner had told the Cyprus Mail that he wanted to repair the house but could not get rid of the sitting tenant, a carpenter who worked in the house. He argued that the municipality’s contractor did a botched job of the repairs and then overcharged him.
Nicolaou responded by saying that the owner did not have to wait for the tenant to leave before repairing the house, adding that the repairs were meant to be temporary not permanent. He attributed the sudden collapse of the house to heavy rainfall and its already damp condition.
There appears to be a trend amongst owners to leave listed houses alone until they collapse rather than invest huge sums of money to renovate them.
“It is a fact that old Nicosia has been abandoned. Many buildings have the same problem like the one that collapsed last week,” Nicolaou admitted. But the municipal engineer refused to accept that the problem was the municipality’s reluctance to lift the moratorium on entertainment spots and eateries.
“Old Nicosia is full of night spots and restaurants. We have enough seedy joints around that don’t help the image of the old town. The place needs rejuvenation of the residential areas. The people to move back to the old town,” he said.
Nicolaou argued that there were plenty of incentives to fix up old houses. “The money you spend on renovation is tax-free. You can get grants of up to £40,000. It’s not financial reasons that are stunting revitalisation, it’s the fact that the city is still divided, causing most to abandon the centre, plus the very expensive price of listed houses.”
The municipality has recently been working on rejuvenating parts of the old town near the mosque by paving its square with cobbled stone and renovating the Turkish Baths. However, revival seems to going at a snail’s pace with large swathes of the town within the walls still rundown, uninhabited and falling.
But Nicolaou was certain about what was needed: “The old town does not need more entertainment centres; that’s not the solution. The people should return to the city.”
The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.
