Old Montevideo gets new lease on life

The Old City of Montevideo, an architectural jewel of the early 20th century with its Art Nouveau and Art Deco buildings –most of them are rundown and abandoned right now- will undergo an all-out refurbishment process with a view to bring former residents back and recapture its glamour as a tourist attraction.

Last week, Uruguayan authorities gave the green light to an all-embracing restoration program of Montevideo’s old core on the eve of the observance of the Heritage Days over the weekend.

“A core with no population is a good archeological site, but it’ll never be a city,” Montevideo mayor Mariano Arana stated during the unveiling of the restoration program that will stretch out until the year 2015.

In the course of a single day, some 100,000 people work or walk through the old part of town which also hosts the city’s administrative and financial hub. Only 10,000 people, though, stay overnight.

“Over the past 15 to 20 years, middle-class and high-middle-class residents of Montevideo moved from the downtown area to the southern outskirts of the city, next to the edge of La Plata River, while low-middle-class people moved out to the northern and western outskirts,” explained Daniel Christoff, director of the city’s Housing Planning Board.

As far as tourism is concerned, the situation is not painting a much clearer picture either, because the flow of incoming visitors come almost exclusively onboard cruise liners that dock in once a month in the Montevideo port, just a few blocks away from the old part of town, Mr. Christoff pointed out.

Thousands of cruise passengers don’t stay too long in the Old City because they are aware of its notorious lack of safety and security as a result of huge population moves.

Mr. Christoff says to be confident about the project’s feasibility because –he says- the first generation that turned its back on the city’s downtown area expected to find higher quality standards in the outskirts of town, but now their children want to be back to downtown Montevideo.

The expert believes that at least 5,000 middle-class people could return to the Old City before the year 2015 thanks to public repopulating programs for the downtown area that include the creation of co-ops for single mothers and their kids and the opening of a workshop –bankrolled by the European Union- that will pitch a hand in house repairs for jobless residents. “It’s important for institutions to send a strong message out there,” Mr. Christoff said.

Some of the institutions already tagging along in this joint effort are the Inter-American Development Bank and the Spanish Cultural Center.

According to Mr. Christoff, other projects in the pipeline will confirm the reviving trend now sweeping Montevideo’s Old City, like the grand reopening of world-class Solis Theater in March 2004. In this particular effort, municipal authorities picked up most of the $12 million tab for the theater’s restoration.