The renovation of a cafe in Yerevan’s Mashtots Park, which has ignited public concern, will be suspended as of today pending a review of the construction permit violations.

 Four municipal acts have been drafted since February regarding violations of the construction permit. The last act was drafted on July 23.

If it turns out that the violations exceed published norms, the construction permit will be canceled outright.

Yerevan Mayor Hayk Marutyan said as much today at a press conference regarding the renovation of a café in the downtown park that, over the years, has pitted commercial developers and environmentalists.

Who’s behind the construction?

A company called Davit-Vanush LLC was issued a two-year construction permit on December 30, 2019.

The company, founded in 1996, currently has five shareholders, three of which are relatives: Arsen Karapetyan, Karineh Karapetyan, and Rudik Karapetyan. The latter was a Yerevan Municipality employee. In a 2016 document, he is listed as a first-class specialist who received a 219,000-dram bonus in December of that year.

The other two shareholders are Hrayr Mirzajanyan and Ruben Margaryan, who each have a 10% stake.

Plenium LLC was also a shareholder starting in 2015 but was removed from the list in October 2019. The Armenian press has reported that the company belongs to the former head of the State Revenue Committee’s Operative Intelligence Department Karen Karapetyan, who was the subject of an official administrative investigation.

According to the state register, the majority of the company’s shares belong to the Karapetyans.

In a May 16, 2018 decision issued by then Yerevan Mayor Taron Margaryan in 2018, we read that a re-examination of the area and a revision of the topographic extraction revealed that the actual area of ​​the land occupied by the company was 1,048 square meters and not the 350 square meters mentioned in the usage permit.

The extra 698 square meters used by Davit-Vanush LLC, was located within the boundaries of a land plot provided to the Kentron-Kanachapatum (Center-Greening) CJSC.

Taron Margaryan decided to lease the 698 square meter plot to the company until December 31, 2040, setting the annual lease amount according to the rates set by the Yerevan Municipal Council in 2017.

However, the rights to the land have not been officially registered. Thus, based on a July 19, 2019 decision by Yerevan Mayor Hayk Marutyan, there were revisions again and it was decided that the café in question needed to be modernized.

According to a design proposal submitted by the company, the area of the land   occupied by the reconstructed cafe is 392 square meters. The company refused some land, but it became necessary to include other areas. Thus, based on a new decision, a contract was signed with Davit-Vanush LLC to provide it with a 392-square-meter land plot with the right of construction.

A jumbled history of real estate contracts

At today’s press conference, Yerevan Mayor Hayk Marutyan stated that the company has owned two areas in the mentioned area since 2002: 277 square meters and 17 square meters.  

Meanwhile, because of negotiations, Marutyan cancelled the ownership rights of that company and, instead, issued it a lease of 392 square meters with the right of construction. Now that property has belongs to the local community, and the property built on the land in the park also belongs to the community.

"He will use it these years, but after that it will become the property of the community. After that, the municipality will decide whether to demolish it or rent it to someone else. The community can’t make a better decision than this,” Marutyan said.

The developer was required to have a lightweight structure, and no trees or shrubs were supposed to be damaged by the construction.

Experts say the uprooted trees were sick

Mayor Marutyan said that he is aware that several elm trees have been cut down at the work site, adding that the municipality issued a permit to do so. He says that experts were called in to assess the health of the trees beforehand and they found the trees to be in a state of decay.

Marutyan said the elm trees can be replaced with species more suited for an urban environment. 

"I am responsible for every tree in the city, I will fight," Marutyan stated at the press conference, adding that when he assumed office in 2018, he ordered an inventory of the city’s damaged and diseased trees that needed felling.

There were 437 of them, but there are still more than 500 trees that are problematic and potentially dangerous.

Marutyan could not say if the trees cut down at the work site were included in the estimated 500.

Associate Professor Kristina Vardanyan, who serves as Deputy Director of the Yerevan Municipality’s Greenery and Environmental Protection Community Non-Profit Organization, says that elms will be removed not only from Mashtots Park, but from the whole city since their lifespan is 40-50 years.

Vardanyan says the elms will be replaced by maple saffron throughout the city, which, she claims, absorb large amounts of dust, nitrous oxide, and regulate the temperature.

"If you don’t hear the sound of the tree suffering, it does not mean that it does not exist," says Vardanyan, adding that they are screaming in pain.

The developer, under a contract with the NGO, has committed to replace the felled elms with plane trees (Platanus) and foliage of a certain size and height, with a three-year warranty. If they die, they must be replaced at the developer's expense.

Photos by Ani Sargsyan