Maria Louisa Bathhouse Now Municipal Property After Registration.
The land plot of the Maria Louisa bathhouse has been registered as municipal property. This was announced by Deputy Mayor for Urban Planning and Development Lyubo Georgiev after a meeting of the Municipal Expert Council on Territorial Planning (MECTP) that lasted over 4 hours.
The meeting of Sofia's Municipal Expert Council on Spatial Planning focused on reviewing proposals, opinions and objections submitted regarding the draft Detailed Development Plan (DDP) for Borisova Gradina.
Sofia's Chief Architect Lyubo Georgiev announced that Sofia Municipality has initiated legal proceedings to acquire ownership of the site of the Maria Luiza swimming complex. The property has already been officially registered in the cadastral map as municipal property.
According to Georgiev, the municipality commissioned an external legal review by attorney Bakalova of the law firm Bakalova & Damyanov. The analysis concluded that some properties within the park lack a legal basis for having been transferred into private ownership.
Representatives of Sofia Municipality, district administrations, the Sofia Municipal Council, professional associations of architects and landscape architects, as well as independent experts, participated in the meeting.
The legal review found that several properties may have become privately owned without a valid legal basis. As a result, the municipality is challenging private ownership titles in an effort to return the disputed land to public ownership without compensation if it is proven that the properties were acquired unlawfully.
The Expert Council also adopted several recommendations for revising the draft Detailed Development Plan. Two alternatives will be prepared for the proposed underground parking facility beneath Kapitoliya—one including the facility and one without it—to assess its impact on traffic and the environment.
Among the council's recommendations is dropping the proposal to reconstruct Yunak Stadium in its historical form.