ACRAL defends the creation of a support program for the rehabilitation of buildings and commercial establishments, as a complement to the 50 million euros financing for urban rehabilitation in the Algarve announced by the CCDR of Algarve.
The Association of Commerce and Services of the Algarve Region is basically asking for a new generation of support programs to be launched, like those that existed in other community support frameworks, but which were not capitalized in the best way possible.
"We had community funds for the rehabilitation of commercial establishments, such as PROCOM and MODCOM, but their objectives were never fully achieved, (…) because this funding was limited to the modernization of the commercial establishment and not the surrounding one", defended the president of ACRAL Alvaro Viegas.
For the association leader, «the rehabilitation of the urban park has to be combined with that of the commercial park», since «it is not possible to have a store on the ground floor completely renovated and then the rest of the building completely degraded».
In the same way that ACRAL considers that it was “a mistake” not to associate the urban rehabilitation component to Procome to Modcom, ACRAL now hopes that the opportunity to combine these two dimensions is not lost.
For the association, the set of incentives now announced must be “accompanied by another phase of a new Modcom, enabling the simultaneous rehabilitation of buildings and commercial establishments”.
For this, Alvaro Viegas argues, it will be necessary to increase the funds allocated for this purpose, as the 50 million recently announced are “manifestly insufficient to meet the needs of urban rehabilitation in the Algarve”.
Also key will be the simplification of access to these funds. The president of ACRAL hopes that the candidacy procedures "will not be bureaucratic, but simple and accessible, otherwise the owners give up on rehabilitation"
The Algarve will have 50 million euros, from various sources of funding, national and community, to invest in urban rehabilitation, announced the Regional Coordination and Development Commission of the Algarve.
Project promoters – natural or legal persons, public or private – will have support through lines of credit or provision of guarantees.
These financial products should be in operation by the end of 2016 and will serve to support projects such as the rehabilitation of buildings or the rehabilitation and conversion of abandoned industrial units for the installation of housing, public use equipment, commerce or services.
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