Pensioner Robert Tuchin shared with us the story of how in the morning he found his old Ford near the dismantled garages — the body was scratched, and the side mirror was cracked. “When I lifted the hood, the battery was already gone! In the garage lay my tools, spare wheels... Everything disappeared!” — he says indignantly.
According to the garage owners, no one notified them in advance about the demolition. “I have not encountered such inhumane treatment even during the war,” says another victim, veteran Yevhen Bondarenko.
This territory is at the disposal of LLC “Sammy-M”, which plans to build a residential high-rise here. In the morning, the process of dismantling the rubble was supervised by a company representative who introduced himself as Vladyslav. He stated that they have a court order allowing the demolition of all structures on the site, and the cars, according to him, were carefully moved outside the garage area. However, he refused to show this document.
In the district administration, we were confirmed that in 2004 the Kyiv City Council indeed leased to “Sammy-M” a plot of 0.44 hectares for five years. At the same time, they know nothing about any court permission for the demolition of garages. Vladyslav explained that the lease agreement expires in December, but they count on its extension by the Kyiv City Council.
Yevhen Bondarenko said that garage owners learned about the construction plans last year and collected several thousand signatures of local residents against it: “We handed them to the city hall, where they promised to look into it...”.
In “Sammy-M” and the Solomianska District State Administration, they claim that public hearings were organized on the issue of garage demolition. “The documentation indicates that they were held,” noted Yulia Volodymyrivna, an employee of the Department of Urban Planning and Architecture of the Solomianska District State Administration. And, according to her, residents allegedly gave consent to the demolition. Robert Dmytrovych intends to contact the police and the court, and for now he has to park his Ford in a paid parking lot.
