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The state of the New Boulevard
It began as a major project that would equip Tirana with infrastructure, modern transport services and greater opportunities for development around multiple centres. Today, almost ten years later, the so-called “New Boulevard” is merely a stretch of a few hundred metres with limited traffic, used mostly as a pedestrian promenade and a car park, and doing nothing for economic development because no streets connect to it from either side. Ten years after the design concept and five years after work began, citizens face considerable uncertainty about what form this boulevard extension project takes and when it will be completed.
The extension of “Zog I Boulevard” was first contemplated in 2007. In 2011, a project was unveiled with great fanfare, envisaging investment of more than 60 million euros in the further development not just of the boulevard but of Tirana’s entire so-called central and northern axis. Extending it northwards, it was said, would bring the capital more extensive development and many new opportunities. But political conflict delayed the start of work, and several years later the project underwent numerous changes that were never made transparently.
Even today, no defined phase of the project has been completed, beyond a few hundred metres of asphalt, greenery and an underground car park.
The French Plan and its implementation
The “old” plan It should be said that the idea of extending the boulevard’s central axis goes back a long way. But Tirana Municipality would incorporate this continuation of development into concrete plans only after 2007, through the so-called “French Plan”. Under this plan, the “Railway Station” would remain in the same place, but the area where trains stood would be remodelled and modernised, while the idea of trams as transport on the main routes was put forward for the first time.
The “New Boulevard” was conceived as a large linear park with two parallel roads running along it.
Implementation of the “old plan” Implementation of the “French Plan” project proved extremely superficial, with priority given mainly to construction permits alone.
The 2011 project and the start of construction
The “new” plan In 2011, Tirana Municipality announced an international competition for the boulevard extension. The winning design was by “Grimshaw Architects”. It envisaged extending “Zog I Boulevard” as far as Paskuqan, crossing the “Tirana River”, and turning the lake there into the capital’s second park, after the Artificial Lake Park. The project did not focus solely on extending the boulevard.
It took the rehabilitation of the “Tirana River” seriously. The riverbed and banks would be improved, recreational areas created along it and several bridges built, integrating the northern part of the capital with the rest, both economically and socially and culturally.
The boulevard extension was to include several buildings of particular importance, such as the “Palace of Justice”, commercial complexes and buildings with public, cultural and social functions. One of the project’s main provisions was the removal of the “Railway Station” and its relocation to a “multimodal station” on the outskirts of Tirana, at the “Kamza Turn-off”. This project was subsequently reflected in the capital’s general local plan, approved in 2013.
Implementation of the “new plan” Work on the new boulevard began in September 2013, implementing only part of the “Grimshaw Architects” project, at a cost of 26 million euros. The change of government following the 2013 elections meant the Municipality no longer had the same support. Political conflict left the project at a standstill.
The central government did not approve the expropriations, nor did it approve the loan for the necessary part of the project. The “political” use of the National Urban Construction Inspectorate would also halt the works for several more months, until Tirana Municipality changed mayors in 2015. With the changes at the Municipality and political support from the central government, work on the boulevard began moving at a satisfactory pace.
Later changes to the project
The new “new” plan… The administrative and territorial reform approved by the majority that emerged from the 2013 elections swept aside all local plans, and each municipality was given a statutory deadline to draw up new ones. As a result, Tirana’s general local plan, approved in 2013 and incorporating the “Grimshaw Architects” design, would also be repealed.
But, quite contrary to what the practice should have been, no international competition was called to develop the idea afresh in line with the changes dictated by the administrative and territorial reform and the new local plan.
Meanwhile, in early 2016, elements that would change the project’s implementation began to be mentioned. In several public appearances at that time, Tirana’s mayor announced that Tirana City Hall would be located along the boulevard extension, that a “block” of embassies was also being considered for this area, and that trains would return to this stretch with a “terminal station, but not a parking area for carriages”. The transformation of the boulevard project would be confirmed six months later by the presentation, in July 2016, of the “Tirana 2030” masterplan, otherwise known as “TR030”, prepared by Stefano Boeri Architetti.
This masterplan emphasised the return of the Railway Station to the boulevard extension, while envisaging “kaleidoscopic development”.
Implementation of the “new, new plan”… Although Tirana’s general local plan had changed, the boulevard extension project continued without a new international competition. In April 2017, while work proceeded without any concrete publication of a “new” project, a special law tasked the Ministry of Economic Development and Tourism, the Ministry of Finance, Tirana Municipality and the State Advocate’s Office with negotiating with Sheikh Khalaf Ahmad Al Habtoor’s company over his offer to build a 250-million-euro hotel on a site along the boulevard.
The press reported that a tax exemption was being considered for the foreign investors in exchange for space made available for City Hall.
A few months later, Tirana Municipality presented the project for the “Grand Park” in the middle of the New Boulevard, saying that it had been designed by “Harvard architects”.
Again without disclosing any competition or design contest, the Municipality published several images said to show what the end of the boulevard extension would look like. By then, it no longer went beyond the Tirana River.
This is the story of 1 600 metres of road with 300 parking spaces, 400 pine trees and 30 thousand shrubs, which have taken more than 10 years and are still not finished.
This is the typical story of every major project in the capital: to become reality, it has to be changed several times and take years and years… The people who pay in the end are always the citizens.
The altered plans for central Tirana, the Zogu i Zi roundabout, the New Ring Road, the Kamza overpass, and other changed projects for public and state institutions, such as the Pyramid, the Dajti Hotel, Parliament and the Bank of Albania, are further examples of how politics systematically makes a mess of public money and sends years and years of the capital’s development to hell.