Ghost houses, “by January we hope to start their demolition”

 The Region hopes to start off the demolition of the “ghost houses” in the delocalised areas around the Malpensa airport, in January. The outlines of the operation are still unclear, but meetings go ahead: on Wednesday morning the Committee of Malpensa met again with SEA, Finlombardia, the mayors of the municipalities of Ferno, Lonate Pozzolo and Somma Lombardo and the Ministries for the Environment and Economic Development. “Today we have made another step forward for the resolution of the ‘ghost houses’ problem,” says Viviana Beccalossi, council member for the city planning and area of the Region. “Regione Lombardia has reaffirmed the commitment to allocate €4million, that are needed to finance the demolition works of the first batch of buildings that were detected by the municipalities. The commitment is to reach the next meeting, in January, with the complete scheme of the intervention and the go-ahead to the procedures for choosing the tenders.” We are talking about 500 buildings in the area of Somma Lombardo, Lonate Pozzolo and Ferno. “By January, there will be another meeting of the Committee that I hope will give the consensus to start the demolition works, an important step to then redevelop the area of Malpensa: we’re finally in the middle of the path that will definitively turn a page for this area,” concluded Viviana Beccalossi.

The hypothesis to reach the operational phase by winter sounds like a wish, but also at a local level, mayors demonstrate a moderate optimism. “The council member has identified the map of the buildings that need to be demolished. This was realised considering the data on the property, the age and condition of the buildings,” explains Piergiulio Pelosa, mayor of Lonate Pozzolo, the municipality where half of the delocalised buildings (for cubic capacity) are located. The municipalities are also studying the hypothesis to create an agreement that allows all three technical municipal offices to work together for the demolition operational phase. Gelosa reaffirms that from the point of view of the municipalities “it’s all about balancing the inconveniences in that area linked to Malpensa 2000,” to the extension of the airport started in 1999. When one year ago the municipalities opened an agreement path among them, the Region and SEA, the issue caused a debate, because SEA (in which, in the meantime, occurred a replacement of the heads) had reaffirmed that the economical resources would have been available only at the moment of the official presentation of the Master Plan, the investment programme that include also a third landing field and a logistic pole in Malpensa.

First of all it is important to demolish, to remove the run-down buildings that have often been at the core of problems linked with petty crimes. But it is also important to rebuild: in this sense, the meeting in Milan has also been an occasion to talk about the future of the area

with the presentation of a degree thesis made at the Politecnico di Milano, in which possible solutions were identified such as a logistic pole, commercial infrastructures and the strengthening of the area that is designed for being a park. This is a challenge that must consider the proximity of the airport and the extensions projects already sketched in the Master Plan: one of the crucial points is, for example, the prevision of logistic areas in the extension area all around the third landing field and new warehouses that risk taking the place of hypothetical warehouses in the delocalised areas.