Bagnoli, 1.2 billion protocol: last stage of a 30-year history

The memorandum of understanding unlocking a 1.2 billion financing for Bagnoli was signed in Naples. A new stage in a long story that puts the spotlight back on the major redevelopment project for the former Italsider area more than thirty years after it was launched. The memorandum of understanding was signed by the Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, and the government commissioner and mayor of Naples, Gaetano Manfredi.

The resources. assigned by the law of 7 May 2024, amounting to 1,218 million for the period 2024-2029, are part of those indicated for the Campania region (Development and Cohesion Fund) by CIPESS resolution no. 25/2023 of 3 August 2023. And the interventions for which they are allocated are: completion of reclamation of the urban park; energy and tlc infrastructures; internal road network and accessibility to the Sin area; water infrastructures; removal of the landfill and reclamation of the sandy shores; execution of interventions for the reclamation of marine sediments; execution of interventions at the waterfront; execution of the Urban Park. In short, this is what Commissioner Manfredi requested in order to complete all the public investments (land reclamation and infrastructure) and make the area attractive and ready for private investment. "What has not worked over the last ten years is that there has been a lack of resources, and this is the problem we are trying to help solve today," the premier said.

Between 1991 and 1992, Italsider in Bagnoli shut down the blast furnace for good. It left a deep wound in the Coroglio district and in the city of Naples: the large factory had occupied one of the area's most beautiful spaces but had also represented work, innovation, a future. It left serious wounds to the environment and hundreds of families without income-

It was February 1995 when the city council led by Antonio Bassolino launched the grandiose project to redevelop the western area. It started with the western variant for Bagnoli-Coroglio, written in his own hand by the Neapolitan town planner Vezio de Lucia. A plan so ambitious and valid that it remains so today, but one that runs up against too many constraints and too few available resources. Its implementation in the initial phase was entrusted to the company Bagnoli Spa (formerly Iri), which was responsible for the reclamation, dismantling and sale, in pieces, of the factory. The first Stu then gave way to a second one, Bagnolifutura, which, with difficulty and slowly amidst obstructions by the League and the slowness of an elephantine bureaucratic machine, implemented part of the project. In particular, it deals with the recovery of buildings of industrial archaeology. But these, although complete or almost complete, will remain unused for many years.

A bomb exploded in 2013: the judiciary opened an investigation into the land reclamation and seized the land. It is believed that the reclamation was never carried out. In one fell swoop, the work is halted, the governance of the time is cleared and placed under investigation, and the previous ones end up in the crosshairs. The charge is environmental disaster. However, fifteen years after the investigation, the Naples Court of Appeal acquitted all the defendants in the trial on the alleged failure to clean up the former Italsider and Eternit area. In the meantime, the areas remained under seizure for a long time, Bagnolifutura went from one commissioner to another, and finally went bankrupt in 2014. At the request of creditors, including Fintecna.