750-year-old Lviv suffers from neglect, and abuse, of its historic landmarks (10/15/06)

750-year-old Lviv suffers from neglect, and abuse, of its historic landmarks

by Zenon Zawada
Kyiv Press Bureau

LVIV - For Lviv's 750th anniversary festivities, rock concerts and abundant beer amply distracted the hundreds of thousands of revelers swarming the city's ancient center.

Amidst the thick crowds, 16th century buildings stood dilapidated, on their way to collapse.

Graffiti marred the walls of the 14th century Armenian Church.

Meanwhile, illegal construction was ubiquitous.

"The celebration was like a theater; it was a theatrical performance," said Dr. Mykola Bevz, a top expert on Lviv's architecture. "The main thing that I, and all my colleagues, would say is that the restoration work for the 750th anniversary of Lviv was not done, although this date was known for many years beforehand."

The anniversary festivities on September 30 and October 1 revealed that an inefficient Soviet style of budgeting and planning remains entrenched in the government, officials said.

Coupled with unmitigated post-Soviet corruption, both factors are contributing to the physical deterioration of a city known throughout the world as "an architectural gem," as it was recently referred to in The New York Times.

Ukraine's own neglectful leadership, unable to reform its old ways, is threatening Lviv's magnificent architectural inheritance, experts said.

"There is a very sluggish system in Kyiv," said Liliya Onyschenko, the assistant director of Lviv's Historical Environment Defense Administration. "Kyiv has to realize that Lviv is a special city that can be like Krakow is for Poland as its spiritual capital," she said. "And they need to allocate funds directly, every year, regardless of whether there's an anniversary, or this president or that prime minister."

For years, Lviv officials were aware of the looming 750th anniversary, an event that would have provided the ideal platform on which to base restoration efforts.

In the view of local architectural experts, it was then that city officials should have begun planning architectural restoration of key structures and monuments, particularly the centuries-old buildings that form Market Square and the blocks surrounding it.

"It was necessary to start thinking about this five years ago," Dr. Bevz said. "The main problem is we still do not have a strategy."

In Lviv's case, strategy is severely constrained by the government's system of financing, experts said, which hampers any comprehensive, well-planned approach to restoring Lviv's architecture.

Every year, Ukraine's Parliament determines how much financing it will allocate to a particular city's budget when drawing up the national budget.

Therefore, such funds can vary from year to year, and sometimes may not be available at all.

In January 2005 the Verkhovna Rada announced it would allocate $10 million for Lviv restoration efforts, but it wasn't until September 2005 that the city received the funds, Ms. Onyschenko said.

In October, workers began fixing roofs, and performed other structural repairs. However, most of the work ceased for the harsh winter. "We lost the whole summer season and weren't able to do much work," she said.

Another problem is that Kyiv bureaucrats have retained the Soviet tradition of demanding the return of those funds that a city hasn't used by the end of the year.

Such a system prevents a city government from being able to save funds beyond a year in order to plan and execute long-term projects, such as Lviv's restoration.

As a direct result, Lviv was faced with an "avral," the Russian word referring to a large, last-minute job that had to be done quickly.

"For the anniversary of Lenin's birthday, this and that had to be done," Ms. Onyschenko said. "And it was done in such a way that everything could have fallen apart the next day, but at least it was ready for the anniversary. It was done by the same Soviet method in this instance."

Historical restoration became quick reconstruction.

Amidst the panic of the avral, Lviv's city government led by the new mayor, Andrii Sadovyi, made a conscious decision to violate local laws on planning and construction.

Specifically, Lviv's entire central district belongs to the World Heritage List of UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization). Any plan for restoration had to be approved by the State Department for Historical Heritage Preservation in Kyiv, according to laws dealing with a UNESCO site.

However, the construction contractors hired by the Lviv government began their work without any such preparation, quickly drawing the alarm of Opora, a citizens' activist group.

"When we began to demand that they show us how Market Square would look after reconstruction, it was revealed that there wasn't any project plan at all," said Volodymyr Viatrovych, an Opora leader.

"Beyond that, the preservation department in Kyiv prohibited reconstruction until a plan was prepared. But the work continued and the main argument was: Lviv got the money and has to use it," he said.

When attempts at negotiating a compromise failed, the young protesters of Opora chained themselves to construction equipment to prevent further activity.

City officials agreed to negotiate again, but it turned out to be a bluff. Once Opora activists removed the chains, construction started up again.

In late May, a preservation department official in Kyiv informed the city government that the construction work was illegal, an order also ignored.

Attempts to block reconstruction in the courts failed as well.

The district judge overseeing the matter merged five complaints into one and then engaged in a phone conversation with Mayor Sadovyi, said Yaryna Yarosevych, an Opora activist.

The judge would later announce she didn't view the construction work as illegal, without having listened to any witness testimony or depositions. The end result was an utter mess, critics said, and Lviv officials can only point the finger of blame at Kyiv for lack of financing or limitations.

"It seems to me that there wasn't any plan at all," Dr. Bevz said. "It was chaotic."

While the city's architectural authorities believe Market Square's classical appearance from the 18th century should have been restored, construction contractors made up their own guidelines as they went along.

Facades facing Market Square were painted with new colors they never bore before. The new street lamps were built with globe glass covers, instead of the metal boxes that the 19th century lamps had to shield light bulbs.

"There is a big glass 'pot' that can break in winter because falling ice will crack it open," said Ivan Svarnyk, the vice-president of the Lviv Admirers Association. "These lamps are nonsensical and everybody admits they don't conform to the surrounding buildings. So why buy them and waste the money?"

Developers also made the decision to broaden Ruska Street - one of Lviv's oldest and historic - to allow for more traffic, without consulting any authorities.

Ultimately, the Verkhovna Rada designated between $20 million and $24 million for a restoration effort that ended up becoming a shoddy reconstruction, officials said.

"Many facades were painted and much was paved, but nothing was done from start to finish," Ms. Onyshchenko said. "In such a short time, no project can be fully carried out. Buildings in a critical state remain that way."

Perhaps the most irresponsible decision, critics said, was to replace the classic stone-paved roads of Market Square with standard concrete plates with similar stones embedded in them.

With the aesthetic appearance of its roads ruined, restoration of Market Square to its 18th century appearance won't be possible, they said.

The concrete also prevents archeologists from performing excavations underneath the Market Square roads, where an abundance of artifacts have previously helped illuminate Lviv's history.

"They had sensational findings - Slavic dwellings from the fifth and sixth centuries," Mr. Svarnyk said.

The concrete plates will also inhibit moisture from evaporating from Lviv's underground river, experts said. Instead, it will evaporate in the surrounding buildings and ruin their exteriors.

Corruption plagues many aspects of urban planning and development in Lviv.

The city commission that is supposed to oversee and challenge any projects being carried out has been inactive, despite the fact that its members collect salaries, according to architectural experts.

"In this country, there is an absence of structures that are responsible for the preservation of historical heritage," Mr. Svarnyk said. "They are created formally, but they are stillborn. They are not functioning. They don't force anyone to pay fines, and they don't stop work."

Without an enforcement body, Lviv's achievement of the UNESCO designation in 1998 has been ignored and bears little legal value, Dr. Bevz said.

The illegal broadening of Ruska Street serves as a perfect example.

"The UNESCO designation has to be promoted," Dr. Bevz said. "The government has to set aside funds in its budgets. But nothing has been done to this day."

In fact, UNESCO conditions are violated daily by local real estate developers and contractors.

Even during the 750th anniversary celebration, construction workers were adding a floor to a building at Staroyevreyska Street, flagrantly violating the law that forbids any additions to existing buildings within the UNESCO zone.

Mr. Sadovyi was elected Lviv's new mayor in March, three months after the City Council removed his predecessor, Liubomyr Buniak, for incompetence. Mr. Buniak was known for his outright denials that many of Lviv's buildings were in a catastrophic state.

During the campaign, in which he ran against former Mayor Vasyl Kuybida, Mr. Sadovyi promised a more efficient and responsive government.

Months later, some are disappointed while others aren't surprised that it's business as usual in the Lviv government, and little has changed.

"He said: we are an open society, we have to have dialogue, we have to understand each other, so I am listening to you very attentively, and so on," Mr. Svarnyk said. "But once a person gets into the mayor's chair, he can hardly hear the public."

Mr. Sadovyi didn't hold a press conference during the anniversary weekend when national and international reporters were present.

By the time the anniversary celebrations were over on Monday morning, the streets of central Lviv were clean of broken beer bottles and candy wrappers.

Lviv had gained its 15 minutes on television, and perhaps millions of tourist dollars. But the buildings of historic Lviv remained crumbling.

"This city is our heritage," Mr. Svarnyk said. "We got it from our ancestors and we will have to give it to our descendants. We will come and go, but the city will stay. And what it will look like will depend on us."

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