According to Aleko Elisashvili, one of the leaders of “Lelo for Strong Georgia,” it is unacceptable to spend one billion GEL on building a new stadium on the airport road when that amount could fully resolve the issue of dilapidated housing in the capital.
As Elisashvili noted, if Irakli Kupradze wins the Tbilisi mayoral election, the one billion GEL allocated for the new stadium will instead be used to address the problem of dilapidated buildings.
Additionally, during a briefing held today, Elisashvili stated that Tbilisi’s current mayor, Kakha Kaladze, and his entourage intend to build residential buildings on the territory of the Dinamo Stadium.
“We live in a city with countless deadly dangers and problems. There are 20,000 dilapidated houses, and no one is thinking about reinforcing them. People living in these houses go to sleep and wake up in fear of death. If anyone thinks I’m exaggerating, come with me, and I’ll show you step by step through old Tbilisi – and not only old Tbilisi, because apartment buildings are also in disrepair. People are afraid to go to sleep or face rain, fearing their homes might collapse on them. Instead of the authorities stepping up to reinforce these buildings, Kaladze has had eight years to solve this problem, and Narmania had four years before him – 12 years in total. What are they doing instead? They’ve come up with a completely unnecessary new project. Tbilisi already has two stadiums: the historic Dinamo Stadium and the former Lokomotivi Stadium, named after Mikheil Meskhi, in Vake. These are absolutely sufficient for our national football and rugby championships, but they’ve come up with something new – a 70,000-seat stadium on the airport road for 876 million GEL. Who needs this stadium?! They’re going to spend nearly a billion on something no one needs. We have stadiums, we have championships, and barely five people attend those matches. It would be great if more people attended… There are countless problems, and with this one billion GEL, the issue of dilapidated housing could be completely resolved, but no! First, it seems they plan to steal half of this billion and build it shoddily, as they do with everything. Second, we have information that in the entourage of Tbilisi’s most corrupt and bribe-taking mayor in history, Kaladze, there are greedy, ‘factory-like’ developers who have long been eyeing this stadium. Imagine the size of that territory – the stadium and its surrounding area. They’re convincing Kaladze, and they want to convince and deceive us, claiming that the Dinamo Stadium is supposedly so dilapidated that it can’t be reinforced. Instead, they want to spend a billion to build something new. They want to demolish this stadium and, no less, build apartment buildings there. This is unacceptable. It’s unacceptable to build that stadium and throw money away on nonsense, and it’s especially unacceptable to demolish a historic stadium to build apartment buildings. This will not happen. Kaladze won’t be able to pull this off because his term as mayor will end on October 4, and when Kupradze’s term begins, this stadium will be reinforced, and that one billion GEL will be used to strengthen dilapidated houses,” Elisashvili stated.
For reference, on August 15, it became known that the Municipal Development Fund of the Ministry of Infrastructure announced a tender for the design and construction of a new UEFA Category IV stadium in Tbilisi. According to the Ministry of Infrastructure, the 70,000-seat stadium will be a modern multifunctional arena hosting football and rugby matches, concerts, and other local and international events. The stadium will be capable of hosting Champions League matches and other high-level events.
According to the same source, the stadium’s territory will also include a functioning public center, with plans for conference and exhibition spaces, recreational zones, a museum, and commercial areas.
Aleko Elisashvili: It is unacceptable to spend one billion GEL on building a new stadium – when Kakha Kaladze’s mayoral term ends and Irakli Kupradze’s mayoral term begins, this money will be spent on reinforcing dilapidated buildings
