"The circus is enough for me in life." The opening of the circus in Penza, which has been unfinished for 13 years, has been delayed again.
A tragicomedy about the construction of the Penza circus began in 2011, under the governor Vasily Bochkarev, who promised to build a modern building in just three years.
Under this pretext, workers dismantled the old 1400-seat circus, considered one of the largest in Russia.
However, by 2014 the project had not been completed because the Samara contractor, who had received more than a billion rubles, Badly concreted monolithic structures.
In 2019, the tender for the completion of the circus was 1,2 billion rubles A Moscow company won the contract, but never completed the project. While the authorities were searching for new contractors, fire safety and animal welfare regulations changed in the country, necessitating changes to the design.
At first, the circus was promised to be completed by the end of 2022, then in 2023 and 2024.
The most recent promise dates back to December of last year: the regional Ministry of Culture assuredthat all work will be completed in 2025.
But this deadline also seems to have been missed: today the local publication PenzaInform published Rosgoscirk's response indicated that work on the construction site is currently not underway due to the termination of the contract with the general contractor, and the technical readiness of the facility is just over 50 percent.
Rosgoscirk refused to name a new deadline: apparently, they were tired of laughing.
Photo: An unknown artist's inscription on a fence near the Penza Circus, December 2021
