Unlikely Baltic Sea Art Port will be built in Pärnu
Unless a miracle happens, the Baltic Sea Art Port (Läänemere kunstisadam) in Pärnu County will not be built. On Thursday, Pärnu's City Council revoked the decision to allow the Museum of New Art to use properties in the center city and will cancel the building permit.
Pärnu Ühendab city councillor Eino-Jüri Laarmann prepared the draft. The opposition suspected that the city government set Laarmann up, but Laarmann said he wrote the bill as he understood the subject. Laarmann said that it had to be done quickly because the planning of the project was already ongoing.
The building permit was issued in 2017 on the basis of a pre-project which Laarmann said is not up to scratch.
"The building permit can be issued on the basis of a pre-project and it is sent to experts. But the pre-project is a storybook, architect's pictures and then a little bit of a fun story about how everything is going," Laarmann said.
"And of course an incompetent finance analysis on how much profit it will start to bring. I am astonished by how the Museum of New Art concluded a €3 million construction contract while having no money whatsoever. And how YIT Ehitus is moving along with it. It has nothing to receive from the company."
The art port concept launched in 2013 as an international project between the Baltic Sea countries, to be opened for the 100-year-anniversaries of state independence of Finland, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Latvia
It was planned to be located in the City of Pärnu, on the left shore of the Pärnu River, next to the Suursild, the only car bridge in the city centre.
The design was to include 10 floating pavilions which would have been used to display works of art from countries around the Baltic Sea.
On October 14, the Ministry of Culture sent a letter to the New Art Museum Foundation and the Pärnu city government confirming its readiness to support the construction of a new cultural object.
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Editor: Roberta Vaino, Helen Wright