Alex Trelinski
PILAR DE LA HORADADA council has allocated nearly €3 million of public money to demolish an unfinished cultural centre that had no work done on it since 2006.
Construction costs spiralled from the €2 million budget presented in 2001 to €9 million just five years later.
The Marina Baches Cultural Centre project was officially scrapped in 2014.
The bidding period has now ended for a contract valued at just under €3 million to demolish what was built, with the winning tender set to be announced this month.
The structure stands on the northern edge of Pilar town centre and was once branded ‘the shame of the town’.
Nicknamed La Paloma, it reached national notoriety as an example of mass overspending by Spanish councils during the boom period in the first decade of the century.
The site contract also involves creating access to an unused underground car park and building a public square.
The total value of the work is €1 million more than the original funding for the ill-fated project.
Another drain on public coffers was the 2020 Supreme Court ruling that Pilar council had to pay €2.7 million in compensation to two companies for lost revenues resulting from the unopened car park.
The La Paloma site will also see a second-phase development of a 1,489 m2 multi-purpose building costing €3 million.
Social services will offer consultations there, and there’ll be computer rooms and a restaurant.
No timeline has been given for when that construction contract will be advertised.
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