Converse Bank Board of Trustees’ Chairman Armen Ter-Tachatyyan wants to build a US$110 million business hub in a part of Yerevan once known for its fruit trees and gardens.

The sixty-year-old Ter-Tachatyan, who has a law degree from Yerevan State University, left government service in 2007 to join ConverseBank as board president in 2008.

Plans for the business hub, in the Dalma Gardens section of Yerevan, has been submitted to the Armenian Environment Ministry for review.

Dalma Gardens had been an undeveloped area of Yerevan, near the Tzitzernakaberd Hill, that once boasted fruit trees and vegetable patches tended by individuals who leased the land from the municipality.

Various sections of Dalma Gardens were proclaimed eminent domain and then sold to property developers to build the Dalma Garden Mall, Armenia’s first shopping center, which opened in 2012.

Some families who worked the plots for years say they never received compensation for the land or the trees they planted and tended. (See: Dalma Gardens Former Lessee Cries Foul Over Land Sale; Sues Yerevan Municipality)

If the project is approved, the business hub will offer office and commercial space, a sports and educational complex, recreational and rehabilitation areas. A hotel and a parking lot for more than a thousand cars will also be built. The project would take three years to build.

Ter-Tachatyan was given development rights to the 2.5-hectare parcel for ninety-nine years. Yerevan’s Department of Environmental Protection has already approved the project pending a second round of public hearings slated for October 25.

One hundred fruit trees will have to be cut to build the business hub, and Ter-Tachatyan would be obliged to provide “green space” on 40% of the site.