Yerevan Municipality announces plans to turn Mathtots Park into a paradise of concrete

• Wednesday, February 22, 11:42

The continuing actions of protest against the construction of boutiques in Mashtots Park have become a bad surprise for the Yerevan authorities, and now in order to justify the destruction of greenery in the park, they say they just meant to improve the area. 

On their web-site they announce a plan to build two alleys and flowerbeds in the park, to repair its irrigation system and to provide it with night illumination.

All this may sound nice, but if you look at the outlay of the future park, you will see that it will have very few trees to protect you and other visitors from the scorching sun of the Yerevan summer.

This is not the first time the Yerevan authorities are talking about "improvement." In 2010 they cut down almost 20 trees in Students Park so as to clear a place for a cafe, while on their web-site they said that they were planning to lay new flag- and border-stones and to "refresh" the local bushes and flowerbeds.

Despite protests the cafe was built, the roads were covered with new stones, but no bushes were left to be "refreshed."

What we have today is just a cafe in gray and no green: this is how our Municipality sees the picture of "improved" Yerevan.

In order to prevent the same situation in Mashtots Park, the greens persist in their protest against the park being turned into a paradise of brick and concrete.