Garden selection

Moscow authorities offer old-timers of Rechnik alternative sites

The Moscow authorities, who continue to insist on the release from housing development of that part of the Moskvoretsky natural park, where the plots of the Rechnik horticultural society are located, are trying to attract some summer residents to their side. Yesterday, speaking on the Ekho Moskvy radio station, the head of the capital’s Department of Natural Resources Management and Environmental Protection, Leonid Bochin, said that the city is ready to compensate some residents of the village for the loss of their summer cottages with land plots in the Moscow region, west of Moscow. As Mr. Bochin emphasized, we are talking exclusively about old-timers and veterans who directly received plots in the park area on the banks of the Moscow River in the 50s of the last century.

According to the chief ecologist of Moscow, residents of the Rechnik village are by no means equivalent to summer residents for officials. As Mr. Bochin stated, for those who “are old-timers and have confirmation of this through garden books and through other documents, the Moscow government is ready to find a solution so that they create dacha buildings not far from Moscow on legal and legal grounds on city lands.” The same members of the horticultural village “Rechnik” who joined local summer residents in the early 1990s, when “the construction of a land pyramid and trade in non-existent land began” here, are not considered by the mayor’s office to be summer residents. “They managed to organize a new association of SNP “Rechnik”, which has little in common with the people who were given the land. But the fact that they registered an association does not give them the right to develop the land, does not give them ownership rights to it,” said Mr. Bochin.

At the same time, Leonid Bochin emphasized that the territory freed from development is intended exclusively for the creation of a park area and there are no plans to build sports facilities there. “It doesn’t smell like a golf club there,” officials now say.

Let us recall that earlier, as part of the environmental rehabilitation of the Krylatskaya floodplain, it was planned to organize a sports zone there with fields for field hockey, a golf course and mini-hotels. The city authorities developed a corresponding project back in 2007. And recently, the Moscow City Duma, at the suggestion of the mayor’s office, introduced amendments to the city law “On Specially Protected Natural Areas of the City of Moscow”, allowing the construction of capital sports facilities in parks.

Rechnik is confident that their village is being demolished in order to build luxury housing under the guise of sports facilities. As Alexander Zakondyrin, one of the participants in the gardening non-profit partnership, told Vremya Novostey, “the city will certainly provide handouts in the form of land plots 101 kilometers from the Moscow Ring Road, which the authorities promise to individual representatives of the horticultural society, at the expense of investors.” In “Rechnik”, the proposals of capital officials to compensate individual representatives of the partnership for the loss of their houses and plots are regarded as nothing more than an attempt to split the team of the non-profit partnership. According to Mr. Zakondyrin, absolutely all 214 members of the Rechnik SNP have the appropriate garden books and “the legal right to formalize property and land relations.” “We do not divide our partners into young and old, we are all relatives of those who received these plots, and no transactions with third parties were made here,” the gardeners insist on legal succession.

According to Mr. Zakondyrin, of those “who directly received plots in the village in 1956-1957, about 80 people have survived to this day,” and all of them are still members of the SNP. “Moscow officials will not be able to split us. There is no need to buy us, we just need to give back what belongs to us,” say the horticultural society. Residents of Rechnik hope that after the ongoing inspection by the Prosecutor General's Office is completed, they will still be able to legalize their houses and land plots. Let us recall that in early February, after the demolition of more than 20 houses, dismantling work to free up the park territory was suspended during the investigation by the Prosecutor General's Office, which was carried out on behalf of President Dmitry Medvedev.

Yulia KHOMCHENKO