Genoa’s Repairs, 37 year impasse

Genoa - No help in sight for naval repairs in Genoa: in September, basin 10 in Marseille will become operational once again; owned by GIN (the group created by joint venture Mariotti-San Giorgio), the dry dock’s basin is 465 metres long and represents the only facility of its kind in the Mediterranean which after decades of neglect is being resurrected thanks to the trend for supersized ships.

In Marseille, GIN, the flagship of Genoese naval repair industry, already controls two others basins, and it is these structures that, in 2014, made it possible for Genoa to profit, – as explained a while ago by Ferdinando Garrè, head of San Giorgio - to the detriment of Piombino, thanks to the dismantling of the ‘Concordia’, and which allowed the wreck to be brought into the port without hindering the repair activities business.

But in 2017, in Piombino, GIN with Gruppo Neri, will launch a ship dismantling and repair business, while for the past two years both Garrè and Marco Bisagno (Mariotti shipyards) have been impatient with Genoa, where areas for naval repairs have not been upgraded since ’97, to the point of threatening to move their business away from Genoa.

The problem is that until now, every project seeking to relaunch Genoa’s port area hangs on the regional administrative court’s ruling on the appeal filed in late 2015 by the Committee for the defence of the Porticciolo Duca degli Abruzzi, composed by its Yacht Club and other sailing clubs. The Committee claims that it is necessary to clear out the area to make room for the repairs facility.

If the regional court supports their claim, everything will be frozen for five years (the length of the extension of the concession requested by the Committee and denied by the Port Authority), although any delay will be the same regardless, since it is conceivable that the battle will continue to the next level of the judiciary.

Meanwhile things will move on: the floating dock, sold in ’97 after 18 years of inactivity; followed by Renzo Piano’s plan in 2004; then the Novi project of 2005; the Merlo project in 2009; the Confindustria plan of 2010; the possibility of having repair activities transferred to Sestri in 2011; then again the idea of a floating dock bought with the Authority’s shares in the airport, and so on...

It has already been two and a half years (December 2013) since the region entrusted the design of Genoa’s waterfront to Renzo Piano, who presented hjs “BluePrint” vision in October 2014, donated it to the city in September 2015, and for which, as yet, no framework agreement has been signed between the city, the Region, and the port (which, from Monday, will have the mandate of its special commissioner renewed for the next six months). At the presentation of the project, Renzo Piano had already predicted that construction wouldn’t start until 2020 and would take ten years to complete.