The Lisbon City Council approved the signing of a concession contract with the Lisbon Port Authority to install the Hub do Mar at Doca de Pedrouços, investing €26 million by 2098.
On Wednesday, Lisbon City Council approved the signing of a concession contract with APL – Administração do Porto de Lisboa (Port of Lisbon Authority) to install the Hub do Mar (Sea Hub) at Doca de Pedrouços, investing €26 million by 2098.
In a private meeting, the proposal to submit the concession contract between APL and the municipality to the Lisbon Municipal Assembly for approval was approved by the 17 members of the executive, with 12 votes in favour, including seven from the Novos Tempos coalition (PSD/CDS-PP/MPT/PPM/Aliança), which governs without an absolute majority, four from the PS and one from Livre.
There were also four abstentions, two from the PCP and two from Cidadãos Por Lisboa (elected by the PS/Livre coalition), and one vote against from the BE, according to a source from the office of the mayor, Carlos Moedas (PSD), speaking to the Lusa news agency.
“In return, the municipality is obliged to pay a private use fee of €4.00/m²/month (four euros per square metre per month) on the concession area (7,484.00 m²), subject to annual updates, the proposal states, noting that there are initial discounts on the respective amount, namely 95% in the period between the signing of the contract and the start of the work, 90% while the work is pending, and 50% in the six months following the completion of the contract.
On 11 March 2022, a consortium agreement was signed between the municipality of Lisbon, Docapesca, Fórum Oceano, the Portuguese Institute for Sea and Atmosphere (IPMA) and the University of Lisbon, with an application for funds from the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR), requesting €31 million for the construction of the Sea Hub.
Dubbed by Carlos Moedas as the Hub for Future Sea Unicorns, the project aims to be ‘an infrastructure with the capacity to cement and enhance a sustainable and circular blue economy, contributing to the strengthening of a highly innovative and entrepreneurial ecosystem.’
The project also aims to promote ‘research and innovation activities, prototyping and testing, acting as an aggregating link, generating complementarities and synergies that enhance the ideal conditions for the success of innovative solutions and new businesses.’
The Sea Hub will be located at the Pedrouços Dock, in a space with a markedly industrial architectural character, linked to the blue economy, more specifically to the fisheries sector, and which, ‘currently isolated from the city, has the ideal conditions for the creation of a new centrality, based on the urban regeneration of this area’.
In the vote on this proposal, the BE council justified its vote against it with the need for a structure for the defence and conservation of the sea instead of a Hub for Sea Unicorns, considering that ‘the sea is not a resource to be exploited, but an ecosystem to be protected’.
The Hub do Mar project was part of the electoral programme of the Novos Tempos (PSD/CDS-PP/MPT/PPM/Aliança) coalition in the local elections of September 2021, in which the Social Democrat Carlos Moedas defeated the Socialist Fernanda Medina to become Mayor of Lisbon.
News published based on the original ECO news item: https://eco.sapo.pt/2023/06/14/camara-de-lisboa-preve-investir-26-milhoes-durante-75-anos-numa-concessao-para-instalar-hub-do-mar/