By Diana Ghazaryan

There’s a park in Yerevan where people walk their dogs, men over 50 exercise and jog, and young moms with newborns in strollers soak up the warming rays of the morning sun.

It’s called the Kirov Children’s Park, located opposite the Shirak Hotel on one end and the Yerevan Municipal Building on the other.

If the Yerevan Municipality and a local developer have their way – the park will become yet another asphalt-laden commercial strip with a bit of grass and some trees just as a reminder of its former past.

It’s all a part of the municipality much heralded – Yerevan Beautification Project

Today, the park has its share of concrete walks and rusting kiddy amusements, all a legacy of the Soviet period. It seems that the notion of a park, in Armenia, has always been less about fresh air and green space, and more about manicured lawns and cafes.

Now, the park has been leased by the municipality to an outfit called Sadourn-A Ltd. for 804,000 AMD ($1,650) per year.  The company says a playground, chess club, a café, a technical support building, and a locker-room will be completed by the end of this year. This doesn’t seem likely.

Stepan Minasyan, the director of the park and also the general manager of Sadourn-A, says the park will be “one of a kind” and will attract people in greater numbers.

Construction commenced in 2014 and has ground to a halt. The reason, according to Minasyan, is that Hamlet Amirkhanyan, the owner of the company given the contract to do the actual work, committed suicide in February of last year.

Minasyan says they are working to complete construction of a public bathroom in the park, followed by the other facilities. At the moment, the only toilet to be found is a filthy crumbling wooden outhouse with no door.

Mariam Avetisyan has been bringing her two children to the park for the past three years and says she opposed to all the construction.

“The park just needs some sprucing up. I really don’t want to see a café and those other buildings. The solitude you feel here is lacking at other Yerevan parks. I like it the way it is now,” said Mrs. Avetisyan.

Her son, 4 year-old Alan, was playing football as I was talking to his mom. He ran up and said, “I come here and practice.”

Some of the park’s large trees have been uprooted during construction. Some appear to have been healthy while others were rotting.

Park Director Minasyan assured me that new trees would be planted in their place. He denied having ordered healthy trees to be cut down.

“There was one tree toppled by the wind. We felled a few dead ones. We had permission to cut all the trees that we did. They don’t give me permission to fell healthy trees,” said Minasyan.

The public bathroom is being built right next to a massive tree. The sight itself looks weird indeed.

When I asked Minasyan why it was decided to build the bathrooms so close to the tree, he said there was no other room in the park.

“This was the most convenient place. I expect to get permission to cut this tree down,” Minasyan said.

When I asked why the toilets couldn’t have been installed in one of the other buildings, Minasyan answered it wouldn’t be good business.

“Here, you have to take a business approach. We will be doing business here. We have to make some money for all our investment. Right?”

Diana Ghazaryan is a 4th year journalism student at Yerevan State University