Private company wants to take hold of one of Bucharest's parks for the year, several NGOs resist the proposal

More than twenty NGOs have written an open letter to the Bucharest City Hall, asking the mayor not to consider a private company’s recent request for the concession of Izvor Park.

The proposal in question was submitted to City Hall by a company owned by the organizers of the Untold and Neversea festivals, called Wunderpark, and features a one-year takeover of Izvor Park for the purpose of bringing "together, in one place, a multitude of artistic expression activities, which will be combined with food & beverages, shops or an NGO development hub”, according to HotNews.

The company states that Izvor Park is the perfect location to develop their project, that it is currently under-exploited in terms of the possibilities it could offer, and that by investing in it for their own needs, they would be doing something positive for the development of Bucharest, the community, and local tourism.

The maintenance of the park would fall under the responsibility of WunderPark, and this would improve the poor state of the park at the moment, the document states.

On the other end of the spectrum, the more than twenty civic groups and NGOs that signed the open letter to Bucharest City Hall are asking the institution to protect the park and not let it be taken over by a private firm, bringing attention to the damage caused in public spaces by festivals and concerts, and insisting that any event organized in a public green space should offer unrestricted access, not put the very space behind a paywall.

"We call on Bucharest City Hall and the General Council to assume their role as protectors of the public interest and to make essential changes in the approval, monitoring, and application of sanctions, according to the legal provisions in force, for concert and festival events organized in the capital's parks," reads the open letter.

The open letter covers the following demands:

• Events organized in parks must not restrict free and open access to public green spaces

"Given that we are well below the target of 26 sqm of green space/capita, we consider it deeply wrong to restrict citizens' access to public green space or to make it conditional on the payment of a ticket.”

• Events that gather crowds of people and involve the setting up of large stages should not be organized in public green spaces

"The most obvious proof that this type of event strongly affects the green space is the state Izvor Park is in after the events organized this summer, the lawns are destroyed, full of shards of glass, and cigarette butts and the trees are affected by the movement of heavy machinery during installation.”