The Riverside Park in Faro will soon be maintained and cleaned by a private company under a contract for services concluded last Saturday between the municipality and Elogioverde - Construção e Manutenção de Jardins, Lda.
This contract was needed as the warranty in place from the company that built the park, Polis Litoral Ria Formosa, had ended.
The maintenance passed to Faro council which has farmed out the work of keeping the area tidy and clean, something Polis noticeably had failed to achieve.
The €25,000 a year maintenance contract is for an initial one year period.
"With this contract, the municipality seeks to comply with a primary goal of streamlining and making the beautiful Riverside Park come alive. Its green leisure area is spacious and versatile and has all the features needed for walks and sports," according the council.
Built under the Polis environmental restoration programme for the Ria Formosa, the riverside park cost €3.5 million and has taken 20 years from original plan to completion.
The new contractor will be responsible for various maintenance operations, including, "pruning trees and shrubs, maintenance of turf, weeding, planting trees and shrubs to replace dead ones, ensuring the smooth operation of irrigation systems, the cleaning of green areas, fertilization, phytosanitary treatments, cutting back greenery and hedges and cleaning walkways."
The park opened in September 2014, Stage 1 did anyway as the long-running dispute over Stage 2 continues; this concerns the owner of the land near the Hotel Ibis, he does not want to sell.
This land purchase would open the route at Pontes de Marchil which in the original plan would enable cyclists and walkers to go from Faro to the Montenegro area near the airport, and on to Faro beach.
The owner wants the sum of €450,000 agreed at a council meeting in 2011. By the time the council got around to completing the deal, the valuation of the land had dropped to just €190,000 and the council is prohibited by law from paying the original, higher price due to this revaluation.
"It's a problem between the council and the owner of the land that we are trying to solve," explained Faro Mayor Rogério Bacalhau, back in September 2014.
Funding for the Riverside Park project came from the PO Algarve21 fund, over €2 million, with the balance paid by the Tourism Intervention Programme, Faro council and “additional funding” of €180,000 from unknown sources.
It is not known why the council contracted out the maintenance of this little used public facility
