Park or play?
A massive underground garage being built in Zamalek has attracted a fair share of controversy.Dena Rashed reports
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At Al-Gezira Youth Centre the construction of an underground garage is well underway
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The ambitious Cairo governorate plan to build underground garages in different locations across the city represents one of traffic planners' many attempts to solve Cairo's chronic parking problems. One of these garages is being built in Zamalek, where the governorate has allocated part of the land on which the Al-Gezira Youth Centre is located for an underground garage and shopping complex. The first of eight similar projects, the Zamalek garage has already aroused a ground swell of complaints.
The land on which the Al-Gezira Youth Centre is located was nationalised from Al-Gezira Sporting Club in the 1950s, and allocated to provide sporting facilities for young people who can not afford the high membership fees required by private clubs. The club charges just LE5 in annual subscription fees for students, and LE120 for families. It offers a wide variety of sporting activities for its 65,000 members on 75 feddans of land.
Although Al-Gezira Youth Centre is the largest such club in Cairo, construction on the garage has already resulted in four of its football pitches being made idle. According to Mamdouh Moharam, the centre's director, "we were only notified after the governorate had signed the contract with the company in charge of building of the garage." Initially, said Moharam, the centre's officials stopped the company from bringing its construction equipment into the club.
Later, said Moharram, a meeting of the club's board of directors found the plan to be potentially fruitful for the club, and gave it their blessing. The Kuwaiti-Egyptian project is set to include two levels of parking for 1840 cars and 24 small buses, as well as another level featuring a bowling alley, cinemas, and a shopping centre. Expected to cost LE210 million, the garage is being built via a 25- year BOT contract.
It was the potential profits from the enterprise that changed the board's mind. Moharam said the centre receives very little funding from the governorate, some LE1.5 million per year. Once the project is complete, 50 per cent of its revenues are set to go to the centre, to the tune of some LE70 million.
Plus, says Moharam, "the government promised that the land above the garage would be made green again once construction was complete -- and that the garage itself would not affect the centre or its activities."
Not everyone has had a similar change of heart, however. Hossam Badrawi, an MP from the Kasr Al-Nil district, is expected to bring up the issue at parliament in the coming weeks. The Association for Promoting Services in Zamalek are also known to be gathering data to help file a legal case against the project.
Ibrahim Higazy, Al-Ahram columnist, and editor-in-chief of sports magazine Al-Ahram Al- Riady, initiated a campaign against the garage last week. "The idea itself is very beneficial for Cairo, but the problem is the location," wrote Hegazi. The greenery destroyed during the construction of the garage, Hegazi said, is invaluable.
He also suggested that the number of cars expected to be using the garage's services will cause more pollution than the area can handle.
Haza'a Khalil, the governorate's investment sector counselor, told Al-Ahram Weekly that "the governorate does not make mistakes." The project's studies prove it does not pose any dangers to the environment. "It is under the ground," he said sharply, "so how could there possibly be any effects on the environment at the [youth] centre or the surrounding areas?"
Khalil said that those who oppose the project are doing so for personal reasons. "These people do not want to develop," he said.
Other opponents of the project say it's not the governorate's land to develop in the first place. "Although the youth centre is publicly run, and is within the boundaries of Cairo governorate, the land does not belong to the governorate," said Ali El-Sawi, who heads the parliament department and teaches local administration at Cairo University's Faculty of Economics and Political Sciences. El- Sawi says the centre's legal structure makes it similar to "national associations", meaning it is an "autonomous entity, but functions under the umbrella of the Ministry of Youth". Since the centre's land was not being rented from the governorate, the governorate has no right to seize the land for the project. In this case, however, approval of the project by the governorate's Local Council, as well as the Council of Ministers, helped bring it to light. El-Sawi attributed these approvals to the government and the local council both belonging to the National Democratic Party.
A group of young boys playing football near the construction site didn't seem to know what to make of the garage. They told the Weekly that they had never used the four football pitches that were eliminated while the garage was being constructed underground. "Only the teams that train there have been affected," said 15-year-old Basel Magdy. Ihab Mohamed agreed, saying, "we were not allowed to play on those fields in the first place. We play on the paved pitch, so I'm not sure how I feel about the garage."
The governorate's plan comprises seven other BOT garages worth some LE1.2 billion, which should provide spaces for more than 10,000 cars. Another five are set to be constructed under the grounds of different sports clubs.
