The article published by , explains the urban vision of Las Salinas, the next steps, the bidding process for the cleanup and the investment that will be made to recover and develop the 16 hectares of land located on Jorge Montt Avenue. We invite you to review the transcription of the article: The real estate company expects to award the land remediation process next April, in order to begin the first stage of the remediation of the 16 hectares at the beginning of the second half of the year. The project located in Viña del Mar of Inmobiliaria Las Salinas – linked to Empresas Copec – continues to advance steadily. After 10 years of waiting, the company is about to begin the first stage of remediation of its 16-hectare site located in the Las Salinas sector of Viña del Mar. The remediation process, which will initially cover half of the land, has attracted the attention of companies in this area, to the point of receiving expressions of interest from 14 international consortiums, of which seven were invited to participate in the stage corresponding to the southern sector of the site. Among those invited are the Belgian company Jan de Nul, and the consortiums formed between the Finnish company Lamor and the Chilean companies Excon and Conix; the Spanish company Litoclean and the local company DPC; RSK of the United Kingdom and Flesan (Chile); the French company Séché together with EBCO (Chile); Veolia of France together with Echeverría Izquierdo (Chile), and Züblin (Austria) with Strabag (Germany). Las Salinas expects to award the tender next April and then begin the cleanup process at the beginning of the second half of the year, an initiative whose cost amounts to some US$ 30 million. They also detailed that this first stage should be ready by mid 2026, to then begin with the second and final phase of land reclamation. We are confident that this is a powerful project, which will finally be able to carry out the remediation in an effective and safe manner, which should be a precedent at the national level’, said the development manager of Las Salinas real estate company, Ricardo Labarca. The executive explained that, according to the latest update, ‘there are practically 10,000 plots of land with a potential contaminating presence. So, the challenge facing the country is gigantic, and from Las Salinas we are leading the standards, norms and how to evaluate and execute remediation projects’. Once the first stage of remediation of the area has been completed, the focus of Las Salinas is on the future of the land, for which they plan to begin the development of the urban project in parallel to the remediation process of the northern part. Estimates point to a level of direct investment of around US$ 1.4 billion over an estimated ten-year implementation plan. More than 40% of the land would be destined for public space initiatives, such as green areas and parks. The rest will be for private spaces, but that really follow the development of the city, rather than the addition of buildings or commercial premises’, said the executive. In general, this megaproject considers a built area of around 325 thousand square meters that includes first homes, commercial areas, hotel and conference centers, as well as sports facilities, among other areas. Thus, the real estate company estimates a total investment horizon of approximately US$ 3,480 million.
Although this initiative still has important aspects in the definition phase, Labarca explained that the purpose of the project is to reinforce the ‘sense of city’ of this area of Viña del Mar, balancing in a ‘powerful’ way the public and private spaces. For this, he said, they will need other visions and capacities, so they are looking for the best proposal that will allow them to advance in the development of the urban project. Among the alternatives that the company is considering is the participation in partnerships to jointly develop some of the lots. They have also evaluated selling some areas of the land, but always conditioned to the design guidelines established by the real estate company. It is necessary to seek the best balance depending on the different stages, but without losing the focus that what is being sought here is to generate the best urban proposal for the city of Viña del Mar’, concluded Ricardo Labarca. There are practically 10,000 plots of land with a potential polluting presence. The challenge facing the country is gigantic, and from Las Salinas we are leading the standards, how to execute remediation projects’, said the real estate company’s development manager, Ricardo Labarca. Getting to the point where it is today ‘was not easy’ for the real estate company. In the early 2000s the Copec Group acquired the Las Salinas site, which had been occupied for a long time by four oil and chemical companies. And, after 24 years of waiting, only in 2024 will the company be able to start working on the 16 hectares. What has kept the project on hold these years? From the beginning, various actors opened fronts of judicial and political conflicts. For example, the neighbors of the area have filed multiple legal claims with the aim of stopping the real estate project. They even created groups such as ‘A Park for Las Salinas’, an organization that has expressed in various instances the possible negative repercussions that the megaproject would have for the community. On the other hand, the mayor of Viña del Mar, Macarena Ripamonti, has expressed her firm opposition since she took office and has urged President Gabriel Boric to reject the advance of the project. In this respect, Ricardo Labarca detailed that they have tried to maintain a formal relationship with the municipality, emphasizing that they have not ceased to request meetings with the mayor’s office in order to establish a joint working relationship, attempts that to date have not come to fruition. We are very interested in the Municipality being very well informed of everything that is happening on the ground. We are talking about a project that is going to last a long time, that is going to exceed the mayoral terms, we have to have a vision for the future. For now we have not received the best answers from the municipality, but from our position, we will always continue to call for dialogue’, he explained. When consulted, the municipality declined to refer to this issue.
