Nicosia residents lash out at ‘cancer’ destroying the walled city
WITH more pubs and nightspots cropping up throughout the walled city of Nicosia, many residents are accusing the municipality of lax regulation for commercial centres like pubs and nightspots, which they say leads to a noisy environment that discourages new families from moving in.
But the mayor insists that the municipality imposes strict conditions on businesses owners to limit noise pollution and said that neighbouring residents are always queried before the municipality grants new licenses.
Yesterday morning residents of the Archbishopric neighbourhood toured the area with the Greens, pointing out the numerous illegal constructions and burnt homes plaguing the area.
Greens Municipal Councillor Stelios Kolokasides told the Cyprus Mail yesterday that, despite the government’s claim that it is seeking to draw residents into the walled city, many potential residents are dissuaded from moving in because of the lack of restrictions on pubs and nightspots, which often blare music in residential neighbourhoods until 3am.
“Either you have to be strict and put conditions on them (closing by 12pm in residential areas) or you shouldn’t license them.”
Due to the proximity of the old homes with one another, their wooden construction, the old wiring, and the prevalence of illegal unsafe structures, house fires are a constant fear.
Numerous residencies have burnt near the Archbishopric in the last few years.
Many remain charred skeletons, with neither the owners nor the government doing anything about them.
“The mayor said that the reconstruction of the burnt homes should be a private initiative,” Kolokasides said. “But they are not being rebuilt. So if a few more burn, what’s going to happen here?
“In other European cities you don’t see burnt out homes in the town centre. If the owners don’t have the means to rebuild them, then the government expropriates and renovates them itself.”
Several years ago Paula Hadjipapa, who is married with two kids, purchased the home that she had rented in the old city since 1987. Hadjipapa is now renovating the house, so she and her family are living elsewhere until the construction is complete.
“My kids can’t wait to come back. And I want to raise them here.” But Hadjipapa said that the increasing nightlife has been troubling her and she wondered why the government is not trying to do more to draw families in.
“Families bring life to an area. It’s an investment in the new generation. I’m not saying no to nightlife, but either the nightspots should be limited to one area or they should respect the neighbourhood.”
When a neighbouring house mysteriously caught fire and burnt on the night of June 26, her dreams were almost wrecked. In the downstairs of the building was a carpenter’s shop while upstairs was the studio and visual arts school of the artist Andreas Charalambous, whose work was destroyed.
Hadjipapa told the Cyprus Mail that the fire service focused exclusively on extinguishing the fire at the front, which bordered several nightspots, while ignoring the residential area to the back.
“My builder went upstairs and for two hours sprayed the fire with our garden hose to keep it from spreading to our house.”
Hadjipapa asked a police officer to send firemen as residencies to the rear might burn down but he replied gruffly that the “firemen know their work”. Only an hour later did a someone arrive.
Her upstairs windows now look directly into the skeletal remains, which she fears will be left as is or torn down to make way for another commercial establishment.
On top of that, her small but green courtyard abuts with a ramshackle structure housing a carpentry shop, which she claims is illegal.
“There is not supposed to be any construction in this area,” Hadjipapa said. “It should be a yard so that residents share an open area.”
Hadjipapa complained numerous times in writing to the municipality about the illegal workshop and about the black smoke resulting from the burning of painted wood and electrical wires. She says she received lukewarm non-committal replies that legal actions had been taken and the process would take time.
But another neighbourhood resident, Demetris Aristidou, 61, said that the government is not negligent about enforcing the law, but selective.
“Look here,” said Aristidou, pointing to a narrow lush side alley lined with potted plants. “These people created a paradise so that they can sit in the evening and breathe fresh air.
But the government says it is illegal to have plants on pavements so they sent two policemen to warn the residents that they’ll be fined if they don’t remove the plants.”
The ‘pavement,’ meanwhile, was barely wide enough for a cat to walk on, let alone a human.
“According to the mayor it is also illegal to hang clothes out to dry.” Outside of one residency several shirts were hanging. “This woman can be fined £50 for that, although she doesn’t have a dryer. What’s wrong with using the sun?”
“What we want is for the laws to be applied. You can’t be a municipality that sends two policemen to move potted plants but don’t enforce fire hazards or noise pollution.”
Elizabeth Elston Aristidou, 56, said that she double-glazed and finally triple-glazed her windows to keep out the smell and noise, which begins at 7.30pm.
“But with the triple-glazing I can’t open my windows,” said Aristidou, who does not have air conditioning because she prefers the natural cooling effect of efficient building materials and breezes. “We are at the point where we have to live on the balcony in the evening. It’s hot only because the windows aren’t open.”
Demetris Aristidou pointed to an empty house with green shutters across from the large statue of Archbishop Makarios.
“The house on that corner is one of the finest old Nicosia homes and at the moment has no residents. But who’s going to live in that house with a family when a license has been given to it, not for a restaurant, but for a nightspot that starts at midnight and goes till 3.30am?”
“So since there will be no residency, this too will become a night spot and the cancer will spread throughout old Nicosia as we’ve seen over the past 11 years.”
Nicosia Mayor Michalakis Zampelas told the Cyprus Mail yesterday that the municipality does not give out licenses to nightspots unless the business has installed the proper equipment and taken all required measures to ensure that neighbours will not be disrupted.
“In every case [for the opening of a new business] we also ask the residents in a radius of 100 metres whether they object or not, and depending on the response we act accordingly,” Zampelas said.
Zampelas said that if over half of the residents in the radius objected then they would not give out the license.
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