Contested territory: the old state fair grounds in Nicosia

Government plans for roundabouts and buildings enraging residents who want green spaces

Ten years since the last international state fair was held, the 250,000 square metres of prime land in Engomi, Nicosia stills stands largely empty and derelict.

Where once Cyprus and other countries showcased and promoted their wares once a year, most of the buildings have now fallen into disrepair while others have been used variously as a Covid vaccination centre, a citizen’s service centre and even hosted a couple of comic cons.

The site won’t stand empty for much longer, but government plans have met with strong opposition from Engomi residents who say they will bring traffic and noise pollution to a section of the capital that is crying out for more green spaces.

The government plans to turn the state-owned land into a research and innovation centre, a conference centre, a small hotel for conference attendees and a few apartment buildings. Some 170,000 of the 250,000 square metres will be open space, of which some will be a green area.

The plans also include changes to the traffic flow in the area, with much larger roads and approximately six new roundabouts.

The plans were drawn up in 2020, but it was not until 2022 that the municipality held a meeting to discuss them with residents and a special ad hoc committee appointed by the cabinet.

The mayor of Engomi, Zacharias Kyriacou, favours what the government wants to do.

“The municipality supports the development, and it believes that it is important,” he told the Cyprus Mail.

Not so the residents, some of whom have formed a pressure group ‘Initiative for a human Engomi’.

The residents’ group worries that the traffic flow changes, which are set to include more roundabouts in the area, approximately six in total across Engomi, plus the influx of about 5,000 more cars daily in the area will make the traffic situation insufferable.

One of the residents, Louisa Mavromatis, said that the state did not seem to “care about constructing a four-lane road in a residential area”.

The road, she mentioned, would pass in front of the state fair area, but also through a largely residential section of Engomi.

She explained that when the state fair had been built after the invasion, the area was not residential, but with the passage of time the community grew.

But most important for Mavromatis and the pressure group is for the state fair to be transformed into an open park for western Nicosia.

She said that the western part of the capital has no green space, and questioned the need to establish another innovation district in an area that does not need one.

A letter seen by the Cyprus Mail from the Nicosia municipality showed that the issue had also been raised in other areas of the capital.

In the letter from the mayor’s office to chief scientist Nicholas Mastroyiannopoulos, the municipality informs him that Nicosia has already bought the abandoned Sopaz building in Pallouriotissa on the other side of Nicosia, that this is an ideal location for an innovation centre and that the use of the state fair should be reconsidered.

“I am of the opinion that the innovation district’s location should give priority and it would be good to include troubled areas of the city,” the letter said, adding Pallouriotissa was an important area to revitalise because it continues to be affected by the legacy of the invasion.

Mavromatis said that the group believes the entire 250,000 square metres should be turned into an accessible park that could be connected with the Makarios Stadium on the other side with an air bridge, that way the area would be revitalised and the capital would have a much needed green space.Commenting on the fact that the municipality said there would already be a green space of 20 per cent in the area aside from the buildings, Mavromatis said the group has been informed that the space set out would be turned into a “retention pond” and that anything else that isn’t developed would be made into a walking path.

Retention ponds are traditionally used to store rain water in countries that have a lot of rain, and Mavromatis said that it would dry up in the Cypriot summers, leaving nothing but mosquitoes in the area.

She said that in a European capital study in 2018 regarding the green spaces available, Nicosia trails behind others with just 4 per cent of land used for green spaces, while Athens has 11 per cent.

First place was given to Oslo, Norway, where green spaces make up about 72 per cent of the capital.

“Western Nicosia needs a green space,” she said.

She said that an online petition has been started, and that the petition so far has over 2,000 signatures.

Another resident of Engomi, Penelope Philotheou said that the state fair could be turned into similar international projects, which have reused former industrial spaces to create green areas.

Key examples are New York’s Highline Park and the Eden Project in Cornwall, UK.

The Eden project, which is now expanding across the UK to different areas, originally turned an abandoned mine into a biodome, where people can experience different plants in varying climates, and also enjoy vast gardens and activities.

The highline turned an abandoned subway section in New York city into a park for people to enjoy, and is also now set to be expanded.

Philotheou said that the state fair area could be transformed into something similar, which would be for the benefit of the people as well.