Bar Municipality President Dušan Raičević and Director of the Public Enterprise for the Management of the Marine Asset Mladen Mikijelj together with the Deputy Director of the Capital Projects Administration, Majo Delić, laid the foundation stone for the start of the second phase of the construction of the new promenade and square in Sutomor.
This is the second foundation stone to be laid at the same location for the same infrastructure project. The first was passed by Duško Marković, then Prime Minister, in 2020. Others, today, were laid to mark the beginning of the second phase of work on that project.
The representatives of those three institutions signed the contract on the continuation of the works in January 2023.
The joint funds for this project amount to more than 1,5 million euros. The municipality of Bar will allocate 200 thousand euros, JP Morsko dobro 445 thousand euros, and the rest of the money was provided by the Government of Montenegro.
The construction value of the entire project, which is planned in four phases, is around 5,5 million euros.
Dušan Raičević reminded that in 2019, the Municipality of Bar signed an agreement with JP Morsko dobro and the Administration for Capital Projects in which they defined that "joint forces will start the implementation of the coastal zone reconstruction project in Sutomore".
"In the previous period, in 2020, we started work on the first phase, and the work was completed in July 2021. Today, we are pleased to begin the second phase, which includes the arrangement of the square and piazza with a recreational zone as a contact zone with the first phase, which is included the reconstruction of the promenade," Raičević said.
He added that everyone wants to change the perception of Sutomore as a tourist destination.
He expressed his gratitude to Morski Dobr because, as he said, they had the hardest part of the job, i.e. the implementation of tender procedures and the Directorate for Capital Projects for providing the largest part of the money.
Completion of the works on the second phase is scheduled for August this year. When asked how they will achieve this, given the work ban that is in force during the summer season, Mikijelj and Raičević said that they hope that everything will be completed sooner.
Raičević said that he will ask the contractor to improve the procedure and dynamics of the work compared to the first phase, so that the tourist offer does not suffer during the summer.
"I expect that we will finish the works before the beginning of the tourist season, and thus the preconditions will be created that this summer the clientele or tourists who will come to this place will be high-paid, that the problem that Sutomore had in some previous period with this project will be significantly change", said Mikijelj.
He is convinced that the realization of this project will completely change the visual identity of Sutomore, that the perception of Sutomore will change.
"Last year, we used the time to finish all the necessary actions in order to start the implementation of the project here. At the very beginning of my mandate, I announced that I wanted to fully implement the decentralization process and that at some point local governments would be significantly involved in the decision-making process of the public company for management of marine assets", he said.
The contractors are the companies "Fidija" from Podgorica and "A3 Team" from Bar, while expert supervision will be performed by "Civil engineer" from Podgorica.
Citizens were wondering what is going on with the works, the authorities say that they are not late
In a public announcement in November 2023, the residents of Sutomore expressed their concern that work on the second phase had not yet begun. As they said then, the work on the future square is delayed and there is no announcement when it will start, and the tourist season is fast approaching, and if the work were to start and not be completed by the season, there would be a mockery in that area that would not even serve as a parking lot as before.
Then, in November, the president of the Municipal Health Spič-Sutomore, Frano Vuksanović, said that the works should start by the end of that year.
When asked by "Vijesti" whether these works started according to the time plan, whether they were delayed and why, the director of Morski Dobr, Mikijelj replied that they did not hope to start earlier.
"There are a lot of things that need to be completed in order to start the execution. Citizens mostly see that segment when work starts on the ground, but believe me, a lot of things need to be done before that," he said. He emphasized that they have resolved property and legal relations and expropriation process.
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