The municipality of Yerevan has not yet settled all problems connected with the largest residential redevelopment project in Yerevan, Northern Avenue, and has not yet paid full compensation to evicted residents. Still, the city has initiated the construction of a new residential complex, which will involve the territory of the Noragyugh quarter situated near Victory Bridge just off the city center and will effect the houses of about 1,500 residents.

While Yerevan mayor Gagik Beglaryan has been giving lavish promises, residents have concerns that they will repeat the fate of the former residents of what is Northern Avenue today, whose houses were bought out several times below the market price.

Last week Beglaryan was presenting to visiting Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov a project of a so-called Yerevan Berd (or Yerevan fortress) complex in Noragyugh.

Luzhkov, who once invested in Northern Avenue, called this project ‘impressive’ and did not exclude that Moscow-based businessmen would invest.

“The presented offers are very impressive. We have an arrangement that my first deputy on construction affairs will arrive in Yerevan in the middle of March with a group of businessmen interested in the project in order to discuss on the spot the participation of Moscow constructors in this project,” said the mayor of the Russian capital.

According to preliminary information, the estimated cost of the complex construction project will be about $6 billion and it will be launched this summer, however residents express hope that what promises to be a beautiful complex will not have an “ugly preface”.

“We do not trust, they promise that they will provide us with apartments in the same place, but they had promised the same to the ‘Northern Avenue’ residents and did not live up to it,” Mkrtich Martirosyan, one of the residents who will be affected by the planned project, tells ArmeniaNow.

Mayor Beglaryan, however, dispels the concerns of the residents, saying: “We will do everything that residents leave their homes satisfied.”

And Yerevan’s chief architect Samvel Danielyan gives assurances that the first stage of the construction of the residential quarter will start soon and during this stage 750 apartments will be given to Noragyugh residents, about half of the affected population.

“The rest will not remain without homes either,” promises Danielyan.

People in Noragyugh, however, feel unconvinced having the example of victims of other major redevelopment projects in the capital in recent years.

“If they treat us the same way, we will start protests now. Still, many could not privatize their houses,” says Amalya Sarukhanyan in an ArmeniaNow interview. The 38-year-old woman could not have her 80-square-meter house and 100-square-meter land-plot privatized because she did not have the required sum of money.

“I don’t know if they did it on purpose or not, but they set such charges that one needs at least 400,000 drams (more than $1,000) to privatize a house and a land-plot. I have three children and receive a social benefit of only 35,000 drams ($92), however can I pay that sum?” says Sarukhanyan.

Meanwhile claims are still pending, going back to the 2001 when residents and developers first clashed over the execution of “state need” in having property taken.

New residential complexes are also due to be built in what today are Firdusi Market and Kozern district. And people there also live in fear.

“We live in limbo. We cannot sell our houses, nor can we borrow a loan or make repairs. We hear everywhere that we are a redevelopment zone. It seems that we rent our own houses and this situation already lasts ten years and we don’t know if we will get normal compensation or not later,” Anna Simonyan, a 54-year-old resident of Kozern, tells ArmeniaNow.