"Park of Consignment of power"

About 400 merchants from the central clothing market Kaluga left their jobs and came to the building of the city administration.

The guard could not resist the crowd, and people almost completely filled the meeting room. Entrepreneurs demanded a meeting with regional deputies and threatened to block the central streets of the city.

The protests began due to the plans of the authorities to eliminate the market, which occupies several quarters in the very center of the city. The land belongs to the city and until the beginning of October was in lease by merchants. At the site of the clothing and grocery markets, the Governor of the Kaluga Region Anatoly Artamonov proposed to break the park three years ago.

- Take everything off - and make a park! He said then. - There is simply no physical ability to place another large trading company. Kirov ( Central Street Kaluga. - RS ) no longer drive. This park will remain as a monument to the incidence of power.

Three years ago, the words of the governor were not seriously perceived. No action after them followed. Trade in the center continued, like the previous two decades. But everything changed this summer, when in a remote industrial district of Kaluga a private investor erected a new city market building. All street entrepreneurs were offered to move there either to numerous shopping centers.

The new remote market of merchants did not suit.

“I went there, looked,” says the entrepreneur Vladimir. - We go bankrupt there. There are no people at all, residential masses are far away, to the nearest stop of public transport half a kilometer. And the only trolleybus route, on which pensioners usually move in Kaluga, walks once an hour. Who are we there and what will we sell? Yes, there are not even rooms for storing our goods. They offered some old hangars where the walls were saturated with machine oil.

People do not want to leave for shopping centers due to a high rent. In addition, according to them, large shopping centers cannot give them a small area, you need to immediately rent a minimum of 10-15 "squares".

According to entrepreneurs, in the evening of October 25, the market director for radio communications announced that the land lease agreement has expired, so he removes protection and alarm from the territory. In the morning on Wednesday, after this, part of the shopping rows was defeated by unknown people.

Protesters in the building of the city administration

In the building of the administration of enraged entrepreneurs, Sergey Drukk, the head of the department of economics and property relations, tried to reassure. But no one listened to the official. People demanded a meeting with municipal deputies. And those at that moment, the floor above met with recently elected State Duma deputies from the Kaluga region Alexander Avdeev and Nikolai Lyubimov. None of them went down to the protesters. Soon the deputies left the building through the back door. They left the hall with merchants and officials.

The merchants were left alone and settled in leather chairs. Some got food:

- We will not leave! What should we do? Hang to go? Everyone has loans, children. Leaving the market will ruin us. They do not want to communicate with us, but we just came to talk, - stood a rumble in the hall.

The police did not interfere in the situation. At the entrance to the building, local Cossacks were on duty.

After a few hours of waiting for entrepreneurs, the mayor Konstantin Gorobtsov still arrived. He did not have good news for merchants:

- We will build the park anyway! The decision was made, the contract with the contractor is signed.

Traders must clean the territory of the clothing market until November 1. Food will work at least until the end of March.

Kaluga authorities promise to start building a park at the market site in the spring of 2017. Sources of financing are not yet called. Although the project cost, according to preliminary estimates, will exceed a billion rubles.