A fence that had stood for almost 10 years in the center of Tomsk has been decided to be torn down.
A fence made of beige corrugated sheets appeared near the Tomsk Regional Philharmonic in 2014. It was intended to serve as a temporary barrier while the area behind it and the Ushaika River were being landscaped as part of the Tomsk Embankments project.
In mid-June, Acting Mayor of Tomsk Mikhail Ratner declared that "it's time to remove this disgrace from the city's main square" and ordered the fence to be torn down. Dismantling began earlier this week: a contractor is removing corrugated sheets and concrete blocks, and cleanup days will soon be held in the previously fenced-off area. The work is scheduled to be completed by September 1st. The area once open to residents will undergo minimal landscaping, including laying ordinary paving stones.
"Raising a glass of sparkling wine! This is a real celebration! I'll take my daughter, who grew up next to a fence, to see what the embankment looks like to a healthy Tomsk resident," "I thought I wouldn't live to see this day," "So much money wasted and nothing accomplished," "Someone was born and raised under Putin, while others lived next to a fence on the embankment," Tomsk residents comment.
Let's clarify, the former governor Tomsk area Sergei Zhvachkin called the Tomsk Embankments project “superhuman”: "Even if I wanted to stop him, I couldn't stop him anymore. We're letting the genie out of the bottle today, because everyone needs it." — he stated at the launch of the project in 2014.
The mega-project was financed by Gazprom, and its development and implementation were handled by the organization SPb-Granit.
In 2019 year Tomsk They completed construction of one section of the Ushaika embankment, sparking a wave of criticism. With 2 billion rubles in sponsorship, they managed to strengthen the riverbed and convert 1,5 hectares of land into granite. Urban blogger Ilya Varlamov called it "a monument to stupidity and theft."
Afterwards, the funding ran out, and the “world-class project” failed miserably, failing to raise the promised bar.
