The Don Pepe negotiation draft and the rehabilitation project: “We are very hopeful”.

December has come with good news for the owners of owners of block A of the Don Pepe apartment building: an external report has given the green light to the reversion of the ruin.An external report has given the green light to the reversion of the ruin, while the plenary authorized the mayor of Sant Josep, Vicent Roig, to negotiate a legal transaction that stops all the proceedings of Justice.

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“The declaration of ruin itself is now in abeyance,” Roig said during the extraordinary plenary last Monday, after learning of both the technical and legal report that, in this case, supports the “presumption of legality”.

Silvia Hernández, spokesperson for the neighbors of the Don Pepe, has expressed her satisfaction with the steps taken this week: “We are very hopeful,” she said to La Voz de Ibiza.

The first step

Last Monday, the residents of the Don Pepe apartments held an assembly at the Can Jeroni cultural center, to which the mayor was invited, with the aim of analyzing the proposal put forward by the City Council.

There, the consistory has raised the scope of the legal transaction, which requires the affected parties to withdraw the two appeals filed -one against the declaration of ruin and the other against the eviction order- to facilitate an agreed solution that allows to unblock this urban conflict.

Although the eviction finally affected only the residents of block A of the urbanization, the meeting was also attended by neighbors from the adjoining building, block B, who wanted to know first-hand the scope of the municipal proposal.

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“We have seen the transparency of the Administrations, we have seen the transparency, we have seen the intention and we have seen all the work they have done so far,” Hernández explained toLa Voz de Ibiza.

In addition, he values that “we have reached a good port” and maintains that “the most important point of everything that has happened these days is that in the Extraordinary Plenary Plenary all the members voted in favor to give authorization to the Mayor of San José to negotiate with the neighbors“.

“This is a very important point and very important to thank all the members of the Plenary. Why? Because they have left politics aside and because they have been coherent, human, objective, creative, in short, I can’t think of more positive adjectives for all the members of the San José City Council Plenary,” he said.

A draft and an ongoing project

The spokeswoman for the neighbors has advanced that they are already working on a “draft with the terms of a negotiation“.

“This negotiation has to say that we request the building permit, we request that the ruin be reverted and, in exchange, we remove all the lawsuits that we have filed throughout this time against the City Council. Obviously, as this is a complex issue and has many points and many bangs, in this negotiation there will be more points. We would also talk about the issue of financing. But, in principle, in general terms, this would be”, he detailed.

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The document will be agreed between the Govern, the Consell Insular de Ibiza, the Sant Josep Town Hall and, obviously, the neighbors.

“It will be a document agreed upon by the three Administrations and by the representatives of the neighbors. This also guarantees that it will be a document on which we all agree,” he says.

At the same time, the neighbors are moving forward with the construction project. “Right now, the ball is in the neighbors’ court. What does this mean? It means that we have the momentum for action,” he said.

For this reason, they are working with an architectural firm to draft and prepare the rehabilitation project and its final report.

“I have already spoken with the architectural firm, with whom we have already worked, who knows the buildings, all to save time and because they are very professional. So in parallel we do these two things; when the negotiation draft is finalized, we have submitted it to the vote of the neighbors and we are all in agreement -the three administrations and the neighbors-, we will already have the work project and the report by the architectural firm.”

The independent technical report estimates the rehabilitation costs at 3.7 million euros, which would imply an average of 70,000 euros per apartment.

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In any case, Hernandez has stated that “we have to make the project from which a cost will come. It may be the same, higher or lower. We do not know. We need to have more options. All this will be part of the negotiation, they are all the bangs that we have to look at”.

Everything to court

All these documents will be presented in court. “It will be a judge who, with a sentence, will endorse this agreement, this negotiation and all its terms, and from then on we would have the building permit, the reversion of the ruin, everything we ask for in the negotiation, obviously,” said Hernandez.

According to him, this “guarantees us that, whatever happens in the future, this is mandatory. So this is very positive”.

“That’s why we neighbors are very hopeful, we are very happy because we can finally see that we are waking up from this bad dream,” added Hernandez.

In any case, he asked for “a little more patience because this will not happen overnight. This has its steps, but they are firm steps, they are steps with legal certainty, which is what we needed“.

And he concluded: “We are all hopeful, happy, we are going to spend the holidays very well, very calm and we don’t believe it, but as the days go by we will be aware that this is already a reality”.

Continue reading:

• Neighbors barricaded in Don Pepe: “Let everyone see how the houses are after so many years”.

• Don Pepe neighbors’ hope: one more step to reverse the declaration of ruin of block A

• Don Pepe: “If everything goes well, it will allow us to get out of this nightmare”.

• Don Pepe: a technician will assess the possibility of lifting the declaration of ruin