In the next two years, the Asser city center will look more like a construction site than a pleasant city center. Cause: a redevelopment operation worth 6 million euros. Six shopping streets around Koopmansplein will receive new paving stones, meeting places, and more trees and other shrubs. This causes a lot of inconvenience for visitors to the city. “But it always gets very ugly first before everything is beautiful again,” says entrepreneur Jelle Vanderveen.
Alderman Bert Jan ten Oever (City Party PLOP) also acknowledges that residents and visitors ‘have to bite the bullet’ with criss-cross construction fences in the center. “But it’s only for a while. When everything is ready, there will be beautiful shopping streets with beautiful stones. And there will be nice shady places where you can sit.”
The streets will mainly have a green appearance. Assen has a reputation to uphold as the ‘greenest city in the Netherlands’. “We have to continue to live up to that title, of course,” says Ten Oever. But all greenery in public spaces is also a necessity due to climate change. “With just stones it quickly becomes too hot in the city. That is also why we make it even greener.” Ten Oever also calls it ‘very unfortunate’ that beautiful, large trees were first cut down for this purpose.
But according to him, that is the toll of the great metamorphosis. Either they were in the way, due to the replacement of pipes in the ground, or they no longer fit into the future of desired urban trees. “The streets around Koopmansplein will soon become one big family, both in terms of paving stones and meeting benches. This is also the case with the trees. They all fit into the family picture.”
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