The planned new apartment building in Žirmūnai has made residents stand their ground: They don’t understand why such a location was chosen.

Žirmūnai residents are concerned about the new apartment building

In Žirmūnai, between one of the nine-story apartment buildings and the Minties Street pedestrian path, an apartment building is planned. There is also a single room (own house) nearby. It is planned to install 9 apartments in the three-story house, which would have two rooms each. Apartment areas: from 39 m2 to 45 m2.

“The designed building has a rectangular floor plan, three floors with a plinth. On the ground floor there will be parking spaces for cars and a closed deposit for bicycles, access to the staircase. The second entrance to the building will be designed at the ground floor level. Parking spaces: they will be open, installed under the console of the building. Three two-bedroom apartments have been designed on each of the three floors. All the apartments have balconies ”, state the project proposals.

The planned apartment building raises many questions for local residents: why such a location was chosen, or whether noise and pollution from cars were considered, and for what reasons, according to residents, the municipality itself has recently planted trees that now they will be uprooted.

“This place is not meant to be an apartment building,” residents write in social media groups.

As the Vilnius City Municipality informed Delfi Būstas, the building permits for the aforementioned object have not yet been issued, the public is currently being informed about the solutions of this project. True, this is evidenced by the table on the plot where the apartment building is planned. The presentation of the project to the public will take place on August 12.

The municipality also answered another question relevant to the people of Žirmūnai, where the cars of potential future settlers will be located. According to the municipality, in accordance with the solutions of the project proposals presented for publicity by the project organizers, parking spaces are planned on the land and the entrance from Minties street is planned. It is true that the answer emphasizes that the project solutions have not yet been approved.

“We want to inform you that the project proposals have not been approved and the decision will be made only after the public information process, taking into account the material of the public meeting (motivated proposals from the interested public, responses prepared by designers, etc.), legal requirements or project requirements, etc. We invite the interested public to actively participate in the public hearing, ”emphasizes the municipality’s comment.

The entire parcel belongs to a legal entity.

The Vilnius City Municipality is not against the construction of new residential objects in old neighborhoods, their insertion into empty areas. This has already been stated by the city council and the chief architect Mindaugas Pakalnis and emphasized that in such cases the objects should be inserted subtly and harmoniously, without disturbing the residents and creating additional advantages for them. However, the implementation of such projects is often hampered by legal nuances – land ownership issues, the purpose of the land, etc. In this case, according to the municipality, part of the land is owned by a legal person and the other part is entrusted to the National Land Service (NŽT). The purpose of the land parcel is another purpose and the purpose of the land parcel has not changed since the beginning of the formation of the land parcel.

Delfi Būstas, after applying to the NJT and asking how his share of the parcel will be used at this location, assured that the state-owned land on Minties str. 42 B is not available.

“The entire plot of land on Minties str. 42 B, Vilnius is owned by a legal entity, there is no state land on this parcel. This land not only has a purpose of use (Other) but also a method of use: residential and dormitory areas of several apartments, which allows the construction of residential houses of several apartments on the specified plot ”, reports NŽT and adds that The parcel belongs to a legal entity since 2018. In what way and from whom was the parcel transferred to a legal entity, the NJT could not provide data.

The municipality does not plant seedlings on private land.

After receiving this information, Delfi Būstas contacted the Vilnius city municipality again and asked if they had information about the owners of this land and why, according to the neighbors, the municipality planted trees on the land owned by the legal person. The municipality provided more information on this land.

„Plot of land of 0.0564 ha in Minties str. 42B was formed for the restoration of land property rights taking into account the cartographic material of land tenure before nationalization presented by the Vilnius City Section of the National Land Service of the Ministry of Agriculture (en ahead, NJT) on 08/20/2014. That is, this parcel of land is formed on free land (undeveloped within the boundaries of the old land ownership mapped before nationalization.

Since the terrain at Minties str. 42B was formed for the restoration and return of property rights in kind to the property heirs of the former owner, this plot of land could not belong to the Vilnius city municipality.

It should be noted that according to the competence established by legal acts on land restitution, municipal institutions participate only insofar as it relates to the examination of the cartographic material presented and the design of properties for restitution and transmission of properties. designed. to NJT. Considering that the decisions on the restoration of land property rights to the heirs of the owners of the former owners are made by the NJT, the Vilnius City Municipality does not have data on which citizens the rights of ownership of this land and which citizens owned this land until 2018 ”- he writes in the response of the municipality.

After verifying whether the municipality had planted trees on this plot, it was answered that the municipality does not carry out afforestation in private plots.

Information for developers

Apartment project Minties str. 42 B, Vilnius, is being developed by UAB SMB Business Assistant. According to the Registry Center, the director of the company is Anželika Kazlauskienė, and the shareholder is Stanislavas Kazlauskas. Information about the planned project published on the website of the municipality as a contact person (builder) indicates the email of S. Kazlauskas. mail and tel. No. It was also indicated that the project proposals were prepared by UAB Artex studija. Last Thursday, Delfi Būstas called one of several publicly-traded UAB business assistants for SMEs, tel. No, but the company could not be reached. A week later, an attempt was made to call another phone number listed in the planned project information, but the company could not be reached again. Delfi Būstas then contacted the company by email. by mail (two addresses), but as of the date of publication of the article, no comment had been received from the company. As soon as it is received, the item will be completed.

Delfi Būstas asked the company if it could disclose whether the legal entity that owns the parcel is UAB SMB Business Assistant, if so, from whom and how the company acquired the parcel, or whether it is wholly owned by the company. Also, if the company has already done work on the plot, such as planting trees, and why it chose this particular location for the development of the apartment building.

Compaction can take place, but several conditions are required

The aforementioned multi-apartment project could be one of the examples of compaction of old neighborhoods that appear more and more frequently in Vilnius, when a building is inserted into a vacant lot: an apartment building, a shop or a building for another purpose. . . This type of urban development is popular in Scandinavia, but there is an important condition for it: the compaction must be sustainable and provide certain benefits to the local population. Delfi Būstas has already written about compaction. This time, Mindaugas Statulevičius, president of the Lithuanian Real Estate Development Association, said that the need for compaction arises when efficient use of existing infrastructure is desired.

“The networks that are being built (streets, sidewalks, water, heat supply routes) are being built with a certain reserve in mind. With population decline, the load on existing buildings, the emergence of inexpensive solutions, these networks become less efficient, ”explained M. Statulevičius.

The urban planner Vytautas Buinevičius also emphasized that the compaction of the districts must be planned very carefully and carefully. At present, for example, in Vilnius, there are many areas that can be examples of district compaction.

“The compaction of districts is taking place, we can see it in Vilnius, for example, in Žirmūnai: there are many places where buildings are inserted, even a large group of buildings. The problem is that they are often built only from the developer’s perspective, there are no common guidelines, rules, a common vision for the entire quarter, and they are built according to common building regulations. As far as height regulations allow, it is usually built according to the building in the background, which means that if there are nine-story buildings around, another nine-story building is being built, ”says V. Buinevičius about compaction problems. .

According to the urban planner, the new building could be used as a strategic tool that could solve the problems of public-private spaces, give life to the old neighborhood.

“That specificity of modernist planning, those spaces are for everyone, and also for no one. There is a lack of more closed spaces and patios for people. And if lower buildings appeared, they would allow the formation of pedestrian streets, they would allow the formation of more closed courtyards. It is really possible to build buildings where there is a surplus of public and unsupervised space, but they must obey the common structure and vision, ”emphasized V. Buinevičius, adding that such an idea of ​​urban planning and development is successfully applied in Scandinavian countries.

Vilnius Gediminas Technical University (VILNIUS TECH), Department of Urban Planning, Associate Professor dr. Matas Cirtautas said that so far we can see the projects underway, which will remove the old open “patches” of dirt from the overall fabric of the district’s spaces, without offering anything new to current or potential residents of the district.