Cafe instead of “Medtekhnika” and rejection of graffiti on the Castle Stairs – decisions of the Consultative Council on the Protection of the Cultural Heritage of Transcarpathia

Yesterday, July 27, a regular meeting of the Consultative Council on the Protection of Cultural Heritage took place in the RSA. 11 projects related to changes in the historical part of Uzhgorod were considered at it, the Pro Zahid informs.

First, the members of the council were to consider two proposals by the sculptor Mykhailo Belen. He proposed to approve the installation of memorial plaques in honor of the writer Volodymyr Ladyzhets and sculptor Oleksiy Shamshura. However, the sculptor Mykhailo Belen himself was not able to come to the meeting and present his projects, so the consideration of these issues was postponed.

The third project – the major repair of the facade of the polyclinic on Hoshovsky street (former Bozhenko street) – was postponed for the same reason. 

The consideration of the project for finishing of the facade at Sandora Petofi st., 46 ended with the first positive vote at the meeting. The one-storey toy store will soon become a bakery shop. New owners want to repair the facade, replacing the windows and the entrance door.

Once again, there were attempts to legalize already performed work post factum. This is what the owners of a beautiful old-fashioned residential building at Sobranetska st., 1 did. They already completed the repair of the façade, and only then submitted the project for the consideration of the Consultative Council. Since the applicant was not at the meeting, they were not able to ask him about the reasons for such actions. Moreover, the council members appealed to the Department for the Protection of the Cultural Heritage of the Regional State Administration with a request to make a corresponding order and to punish the owners for the uncoordinated and careless repair of the old building façade.

The next applicant appealed to the council about the finishing of the facade of a residential building at Drugety st., 57. They want to clean and repair all forged items on the balcony and gates, repair the façade with preservation of the decor and replace the windows with new wooden copies. The members of the council asked to revise the project because it didn’t include clear measurements and drawings.

The members of the council also postponed the consideration of the next issue – about the facade of the building of the Society of Hungarian Culture of Transcarpathia on Parvoslavna embankment which was damaged by the explosion. The project was not considered this time because the author could not attend the council meeting.

Then, the members of the council considered the request of the owner of an apartment in the residential building at Dovzhenko st., 4, who asked for permission to build a mansard room above his apartment. But members of the council noted that it is one of the most beautiful and most significant houses of the Small Galagov. Since Small Galagov is being prepared for inclusion into the UNESCO World Heritage site, such rearrangements are inadmissible. In addition, this building is a monument of architecture and any superstructures here are contrary to the law. Therefore, the members of the council unanimously rejected the project.

But they allowed to remake a part of the former "Medtekhnika" into a cafe. It is the part of the building overlooking Luchkay street and it is an extension of the Soviet era. There, on the first floor, they will build a cafe with access to the spacious terrace on the roof.

The members of the council also supported the project of expansion and extension of the attic in the courtyard of the building at Korzo st., 24. Once this one-story building was a dwelling house, then, in Soviet times, it was nationalized and turned into a commercial object; most of Uzhgorod residents remember it from the Soviet times as the cafe "Pancakes". Now, the owners of the building want to use the attic of the house for the arrangement of the attic floor, with the facade from the side of street remaining unchanged.

And finally, the members of the council considered the request of the organizers of the "Cans Up" Street Art Street Festival to paint the wall along the Castle Stairs. Representative of the Organizing Committee Vitaliy Holovets said that the festival would take place in Uzhgorod on August 18-19, artists from all over Ukraine, as well as from several European countries would take part in it. The organizers chose the Castle Stairs because they consider the fence between the street and the territory of the Greek Catholic Cathedral untended. They promised to first whitewash the entire wall at their own expense, and during the festival, to provide the surface for the artists to paint it with spray cans.

The organizers did not have previous sketches of the works and the official permission from the rector of the Cathedral. The members of the council agreed to approve the festival only under several conditions: if there is the official permission of the rector of the Cathedral, if the graffiti on the wall does not contain politics, violence, erotica and advertising, and if the wall on the castle stairs is whitewashed three months later. The organizers of the festival did not agree with such conditions and said that they would be looking for another location for it, outside the historic area of ​​the city.