The mayor, in concert with town councillor Mr Peveraro and town councillor Mr Viano proposes:
Up to recent times, Turin was considered as the best Italian, or maybe European, example of "one-company-town": in fact, Turin has always been identified with Fiat in Italy and abroad. However, over the last few years, economic operators and scholars have been trying to find alternatives to the evident condition of industrial decline in Turin’s area, caused by its strong dependence on the automobile industry. New scenarios of transformation for Turin’s productive systems were proposed, even through the definition of a new image of the city. Local authorities, in particular, got involved in this sense: they have thus established ITP (Investimenti Torino e Piemonte, i.e. Investments in Turin and Piedmont), the first local agency for investments in Italy; they have defined the strategic project "Torino Internazionale"; they have revised the General Town-planning Scheme and drafted the Coordination Territorial Plan of the Province of Turin.
Therefore, a new productive system has been identified next to the manufacturing and automotive sector, which led to the development and growth of the city at the beginning of the last century. This system entails a growing importance of sectors that are already present over the territory, such as telecommunications, electronics and computer technology, airspace technologies, instrument engineering, design and planning, antitheft devices, not to mention the more traditional productive sectors, such as printing, graphic arts and the manufacture of ballpoint pens. It should also be recalled that Turin has had a central role in the tertiary sector, in particular in insurance and banking fields. Such leadership position has been damaged by recent merging operations that caused Cassa di Risparmio di Torino (merged in Unicredit) and SAI to move their registered offices outside Turin.
The transformation of Turin’s productive system, and particularly the gradual abandonment of traditional manufacturing sectors, had already been foreseen and anticipated by Turin’s General Town-planning Scheme, focused on recovering disused industrial sites and on bridging the rift that divided the city over the last century and is now expected to become the axle of the new linear centre (the so-called Spina centrale, i.e. the Backbone), with the accomplishment of the railway line.
As it is well-known, the four parts of the Spina Centrale form a complex of disused areas extending over 2.100.000 sq. metres. Important interventions will be carried out upon such areas. Spina 2, in particular, extending on a surface of about 367.000 sq. metres, represents the highest urban accessibility ambit, at the crossroads between the Underground and the High-speed railway at Porta Susa station. Given such central location, great facilities will be developed at the urban scale: the enlargement of the Politecnico, the creation of a Media Olympic Village (that will be converted into a university residence after 2006 Olympic Winter Games), the establishment of an integrated cultural pole (including the new Central Town Library, a theatre and a museum), a contemporary exhibition centre to be located in the H-shaped building in the complex of the Officine Grandi Riparazioni (best known as OGR), the reclaiming of the former prison “Le Nuove” to complete the law complex and finally a new area designed to host houses, offices, commercial activities and accommodation facilities.
It is thus evident that urban and building interventions, as provided by the General Town-planning Scheme, represent the conditions necessary to achieve the transformation of the city in its whole, and its productive system in the specific; however, such interventions are certainly not sufficient to guarantee the renewal of the productive structure if they are not supported by a consistent policy focused on the economic development of the territory and aimed at attracting new companies and reinforcing the existing ones, which already represent a strongpoint for the territory.
As far as the development of the territory and the growth of its competitiveness are concerned, great importance is given to the typologies of the already existing or newly-established activities (productive or tertiary activities having a high-technological content and being less exposed to the risk of delocalisation), and to the building typologies (office districts and research centres) compatible with the prevailingly residential urban structure. In other words, the establishment of a commercial branch, for example, is very different from the realisation of an office district or a research centre, also from an overall employment point of view. In fact, productive settlements characterized by a high and innovative know-how and highly professional operators entail a mine of activities and productive, cultural and social relations that are much wider and more significant than the traditional activities. The added value they bear is larger and the growth in human, social and economic richness is even more important for the territory: such characterized activities attract qualified human resources, make the territory appealing to the settlement of new enterprises and foster the creation of local spin offs, by promoting an occupational increase both for specialized and non-specialized workers.
It is in this framework of interventions, aimed at fostering development and economic transformation and characterizing Turin’s recent administrative policies, that the “Spina” areas represent a fundamental instrument for attracting new important investments and maintaining and enhancing the already existing activities. It is important to remark that this administrative directive is perfectly consistent with one of the main functions of the local authority: promoting the economic, social development and the quality of life for the community represented.
Moreover, the expected investment on the “Spinas” are extremely important and, even though they are publicly financially supported (PRIU, DOCUP funds), they need significant private funding.
Maintaining company executive centres over the territory, be it manufacturing or tertiary industries, allows the existence of a directive function for industrial strategies and modes of access to capitals. In order to invert the trend of industrial decline and return to a situation of economic growth, it is thus necessary to require the companies operating over Turin’s territory to maintain therein greater added value activities, employing highly qualified personnel. The local government has to make precise choices, based on a long-run perspective. Institutions have to cooperate with the social parties and with all economic and financial operators working in Turin. It is also necessary to hinder and hopefully stop migration and abandonment phenomena that occurred over the urban territory: it is enough to remind recent cases when important national and international companies, established and developed in Turin, transferred their head offices, and not only, to other cities: Telecom, Seat Pagine Gialle, Sai, Superga, Rai, Vitaminic, L’Oreal, Cassa di Risparmio di Torino, GFT.
In order to overcome the “fordist” phase, the City has to set up a global reorganisation of the productive processes and their relation with the territory, diversifying its economic activities. In this context, our City will have to be able to offer investment opportunities, develop products, services and foster innovation.
The economic development of a territory depends on the availability of a sufficient number of operators having ideas, skills, means (especially financial means) and adequate opportunities to establish new enterprises.
It is starting from such requirements that the enhancement of the building rights of the City of Turin over Spina 2 will start. First and foremost, it is necessary to specify that 37.000 sq. metres of gross building area (28.000 out of which belonging to the City and 9.000 sq. metres of gross building area belonging to RFI) are located in the area between C.so Inghilterra, C.so Vittorio Emanuele and Via Cavalli.
From the very first draft of the Genaral Town-planning Scheme, it was planned to build two towers, for tertiary activities, in the same area of Spina 2, bounded by C.so Vittorio Emanuele, C.so Bolzano, P.zza Statuto, Via Cavalli and C.so Inghilterra. Moreover, it is to say that in March 2002, the national railways (Ferrovie dello Stato) advertised an international competition for the planning of Porta Susa railway Station to be realised in Corso Bolzano. The winning project, presented by the Arep Company from Paris, provides a new centre integrated to the station itself and the realisation of one of the two towers mentioned above to be used as offices and hotels located in Corso Vittorio Emanuele II.
Therefore, in this context, the intervention on Spina 2 acquires a strategic importance, not only because of the physical reclamation of a central area, but also because of the ensuing opportunity for hindering and hopefully stopping the transfer of head offices and other strategic activities to other cities.
Given such considerations, starting from the assessments exposed about the public interest to pursue in carrying out the alienation of the building rights localised in Spina 2, it is necessary to examine the proposal of the Sanpaolo IMI group, presented to the Mayor of Turin with letter n. 100/Dir dated 31st May 2004 (Annex 1).
In fact, in its proposal, the banking group mentioned above requires the acquisition of 45.000/50.000 sq. metres of gross building area in order to build a “tower” at the corner between Vittorio Emanuele and Corso Inghilterra (as provided by the current General Town-planning Scheme), able to host offices for hundreds of employees.
Sanpaolo IMI’s proposal meets the interest of the City to reinforce the presence of qualified economic activities: in the specific case, the banking group commits itself, also through a very significant investment, not only to guaranteeing and reinforcing the stay of its head office in Turin, but also to conveying in the same place other activities that are now located in other cities.
The building will be designed by an expert that will be selected through a consultation procedure involving world-famous architects. By this proposal, the banking group would like to realise a building having a high architectural value, able to trigger urban marketing processes and give Turin a cultural and architectural contribution.
The Sanpaolo IMI group, which can boast a direct and indirect presence in more than 30 different markets in the world, including the main European, Asian and American countries, with an expansion program aimed at improving its presence both in the Mediterranean Basin and in the Middle East, employs about 43.500 people worldwide, with a network of 3.000 branch offices over the Italian territory (about 17.000 employees in the North West, 11.000 in the North East, 6.000 in the Central regions, 1.000 in Sicily and Sardinia, and 8.000 in the South). The origins of the group date back to an ancient past: the Compagnia della Fede Cattolica (the Company of Catholic Faith) was founded in 1563 with a view to assisting poor people with free loans on pledge. Centuries later, in 1928, after having overcome a severe bank crisis in the late 19th c., the Compagnia changed its name into Istituto di San Paolo di Torino - Charity and Credit, to become then a public credit institution in 1932. Between 1992 and 1997, after implementing a program of territorial expansion designed to purchase local, national and foreign banks, it renounced the status of public credit institution to become a public limited company. Simultaneously, the Compagnia di San Paolo Foundation took over all the non-profit activities in which the Istituto di Credito was engaged. Finally, over the years from 1998 up to now, a merger with IMI has been carried out, and the growth process at a national level has been completed through the acquisition of Banco di Napoli and a further merger with the Cardine Group (including, in its turn, the Casse Venete and Casse Emiliano Romagnole groups, accounting for the following banks: Cariparo, Carisbo, Carive, Cassa di Risparmio di Udine e Pordenone, Cassa di Risparmio di Gorizia and CRUP, Banca Popolare dell’Adriatico, and Banca Agricola di Cerea).
In this light, Sanpaolo IMI’s proposal appears to meet, at first sight, the public interest of the City.
As a consequence, with a view to promoting the abovementioned public interest in the best possible way, a procedure must be established to allow the City to detect other operators, whose proposals possibly pursue the public interest as well.
First and foremost, may we point out that alienation through public auction does not allow a due protection of the public interest. If an auction took place where bids were to be offered up to the highest price, in fact, experts of building management might be awarded the price. In this case, they would tend to maximize their profits by subdividing the estate at stake even in a large number of lots and thus disregarding any possible added value to the City’s economic development. In addition to that, they would not devote their attention to solutions of high architectural value, since they normally entail a considerable increase in the building costs.
Adjudication through the evaluation of the most profitable offer, in this case, may also prove highly unsuitable for several cogent reasons. When adopting this procedure, it is necessary to give an exact definition of the quality and project assessment elements.
This previous definition appears to be rather difficult to be offered in a moment when there are no clear indications about the real localising potential expressed by the Turin area, even from any market research. This would entail the risk of introducing precautionary assessment elements not corresponding to any existing demand, i.e. basing the assessment rules on the one and only interest expressed so far by, in this specific case, Sanpaolo IMI group’s. This may lead to imposing obligations resulting in the hindrance of or disadvantage to other interests in the process of activity localisation which are presently unknown to the Administration, but might prove to meet the public interest.
This is the reason why, under the special and exceptional circumstances mentioned above, having noted that the proposal put forward by Sanpaolo IMI group (Annexe 1) meets the public interest promoted by the City as highlighted and defined in this provision, the procedure chosen for the alienation of the City’s building rights is reported in the following lines:
A further council provision is required to acknowledge the results of the survey and the assessment - carried out by the field engineering departments of the city supported by the ‘Casa Città’ (City House) Department at the Turin’s Politecnico - of the commercial value of the building rights belonging to the City itself or to a third party, and to approve the following phase of private negotiation, aimed at detecting the purchaser of the abovementioned gross building area.
May we stress, however, that a successful negotiation will be deemed ineffective unless the variation in the urban planning providing for the adjustments necessary to allow the realisation of the chosen project is previously approved. Once the variation approved, the parties meet for the next phase and draw up the contract of property transfer concerning both the area at stake and the building rights attached to it.
Furthermore, may we underline that meeting the demand set in the proposal on annexe, as well as in other proposals which may be put forward in compliance with the procedure described above, might need an gross building area larger than it is currently provided and available in the City.
The relevant building rights will be available upon implementation of the different procedures described as follows, which may not be understood only as an alternative to each other, to be approved by council resolution:
That being stated,
THE TOWN COUNCILLORS
In compliance with the Consolidated Text of the Rules regulating local authorities approved by decree No 267on 18 August 2000, whose art. 42 indicates the actions falling under the competence of Town Councils;PROPOSE TO THE TOWN COUNCIL,
For the reasons explained in the foreword, entirely referred to and part of the decisions, to approve:
| THE MAYOR (Sergio CHIAMPARINO) |
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| THE TOWN COUNCILLOR FOR PROPERTY (Paolo Peveraro) |
THE TOWN COUNCILLOR FOR URBAN PLANNING (Mario Viano) |
| THE DIRECTOR GENERAL (Ing. Cesare Vaciago) |
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| THE CHAIRMAN OF THE PROPERTY, PARTICIPATION AND INFORMATION SYSTEM DEPARTMENT (Dr. Sandro GOLZIO) |
THE CHAIRMAN OF THE TOWN PLANNING (Arch. Giuseppe Gazzaniga) |
| THE CHAIRMAN OF THE PROPERTY MANAGEMENT (Dr. Vittorio Sopetto) |
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| Favourable opinions are expressed on the technical consistency | |
| THE DIRECTOR-COORDINATOR OF THE LOGISTICS AND ESTATE ASSESSMENT SECTOR (Arch. Giovanni Oggioni) |
THE DIRECTOR-COORDINATOR OF THE ADMINISTRATIVE PROCEDURES FOR URBAN
PLANNING SECTOR (Dott.ssa Paola Virano) |
| THE DIRECTOR OF THE PURCHASING, SELLING AND INSTITUTIONAL RELATIONS
SECTOR (Dott.ssa Carla Villari) |
, THE DIRECTOR OF THE PROJECTS FOR URBAN REORGANISATION SECTOR (Arch. Angelica Ciocchetti) |
| Favourable opinions are expressed on the accounting. | |
| THE FINANCIAL DIRECTOR (Dr. Domenico PIZZALA) |
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