The Government Commission of the Barcelona’s town hall has initially approved a new use plan for the district of the Eixample which foresees limit the number of premises dedicated to activities such as catering, with the desire to preserve local trade, in a measure that the PSC questions.
It was explained this Friday at a press conference by the deputy mayor for Ecology, Urban Planning, Infrastructure and Mobility of the consistory, Janet Sanz; and the councilor of the Eixample, Pau Gonzàlez.
Specifically, the use plan regulates the implementation of public competition activities such as restoration and musical activities; food establishments such as self-services and food stores with tasting; and premises linked to tourist activity such as bike rental and the sale of trips, among others.
New regulation
To order the implementation of new businesses of this type, cConditions in relation to the distance between premises the same type; the minimal surfaces and maxims and the width of the streets, and the maximum number of stores that can open in a given area is limited.
The proposed use plan establishes a single regulation for the entire Eixampleexcept municipal markets, which simplifies current regulations and will replace the use plans for the Sant Antoni neighborhood and Girona street -the latter has served as a model for the new plan-.
The new regulation seeks to prevent this dynamic from reproducing in other parts of the district, however, it does not have retroactive effects on licenses already granted.
Currently the Eixample has 14,416 premises, and 28% are dedicated to restaurants, self-services, food stores, convenience stores and musical activities, furthermore, only the restaurant and tasting activities represent the 20% of all the establishments in the district and almost 30% of the premises dedicated to the restoration of the city.
Once the use plan has been initially approved, a two-month public exhibition period will now open and a participatory process will be carried out to collect the contributions of the neighborhood, entities and political groups to try to integrate improvements to the document and bring it to final approval. .
PSC position
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Before the initial approval of the new regulation, the spokeswoman for the municipal group of the PSC in the city Hall, Rosa Alarcon, has questioned that it should be applied to the entire district, as well as the type of businesses it regulates, and has criticized that it has been done “only from urban planning”, assured that they see a use plan as necessary but that it must also take into account the commerce .
Alarcón has assured that the district houses different realities: “The neighborhood of the Sagrada Familia is not the same as the neighborhood of Fort Pienc and in that sense we are betting that the regulation of the use plan be made in the streets affected by the Superilla, which in itself will produce gentrification,” he specified, adding that a convenience store is not the same as a grocery store. bikes.