Although the neighborhood claim comes from before, in 2018 the City Council of l’Hospitalet de Llobregat decided to install an elevator in the Can Buxeres park. The works started in 2019, but almost five years later they are still unfinished. A string of administrative problems and the global context have postponed a project that aims to save the slope of this point in the Sanfeliu neighborhood. Yesterday the Consistory announced that the work to finish the endless elevator has resumed. There is some skepticism among the residents.
In fact, a seemingly not very complex work went awry from the start. Already at the end of 2019, a temporary suspension of work was lamented, but in 2020 things got very ugly. The covid brought a halt to this public work and many others, but when the restrictions were lifted the company that was executing the work entered bankruptcy. I couldn’t go on. The skeleton where the elevator will be placed was erected, but it was empty.
The security of the space was prioritized first, and when the tender for this was underway, the first firm arrived and solved it. Then the Consistory tried to finish the first public tender with another corporation, but then the war in Ukraine and the price of supplies was already a reality and no one was willing to finish the elevator at the price of years before.
Finally, the City Council opted for a “negotiated procedure”, explains the first deputy mayor, Fran Belver. With this maneuver they wanted to shorten the deadlines and consult trusted companies to then “choose the best offer”. However, since the beginning of June, the elevator itself has been under construction at the factory. Belver explains that these days in Can Buxeres the pre-installation work will be done, and that the most visible works for citizens will be carried out in October to have the equipment ready in November.
But, with everything that has happened, there is disbelief. “We don’t trust it, we’ve heard promises many times,” says Santiago Lomares, board member of the Sanfeliu neighborhood association. “We’ve been behind the elevator for two legislatures,” he recalls. “There is a lot of slope in an area with schools”, says Lomares, tired of seeing that there are grandparents suffering with their grandchildren. In addition, there is a large supermarket and “with the carts, coast”. “This time is the good one”, Belver swears for his part.
The first project had a price of 263,933 euros plus VAT. The current one, with the work half done, has a budget of 294,000. For now, what is done is a “small” civil work and what costs the most is the machinery, which has become “expensive” due to the higher cost of materials and inflation, defends the first deputy mayor.
