The Republican Stadium Will Be Sold to the USA to Build an Embassy

The land of the former Republican Stadium will officially become the property of the US Embassy, which plans to build a new headquarters there. The Public Property Agency has started the procedure of selling the former stadium. Thus, the land will be transferred from state to private ownership, nokia.md reports with reference to tv8.md. The Government of the Republic of Moldova and the United States will conclude a Memorandum of Understanding, which will define the conditions for the transfer of land. Thus, the Public Property Agency should determine the value of the state-owned land plot and create a working group for its approval. At the same time, according to the document, the United States will request, and the Government of the Republic of Moldova will make every effort to assist in obtaining written permission from the Chisinau municipality and other relevant authorities within twelve months after the signing of the Memorandum. The United States can finance and build access roads and corresponding U-turn lanes along all four boundaries of the site and maintain two-way traffic from the site to these four streets. The United States undertakes to update and repair the gates of historical value, the entrance and the associated premises. In addition, the United States will allocate part of the land for public parking spaces, the project of which will be developed in cooperation with the Government of the Republic of Moldova and local design experts. The United States and the Government of the Republic of Moldova will also agree on the name of the park on this territory, which will represent the relations between the countries or a common goal, or another suitable name to be agreed upon by both sides. Finally, the United States will have the right to use part of the park space for art exhibitions, events or other cultural events. The Republican Stadium was a multi-purpose stadium that opened in 1952. But in 2006 it was closed, and a year later, on the instructions of former Prime Minister Vasile Tarlev, it was demolished. Then Tarlev promised that a modern arena with 20,000 seats, a huge parking lot and a hotel would be built in its place. Restoration work has not begun. In 2018, when the Democrats were in power, the parliament decided to transfer a 5-hectare plot to the US Embassy for the construction of a new headquarters. On December 3, 2020, the unofficial PSRM-Sor coalition in parliament annulled the law according to which the land where the former Republican Stadium was located was to be sold to the US Embassy. Ilan Sor was going to build MoldovaLand and BasarabiaLand on this place - a sports palace and an amusement park. PAS deputies challenged this decision of the parliament already in the new convocation in the Constitutional Court, which in July 2021 declared unconstitutional the parliamentary decision which abolished the Law on the transfer of the Republican Stadium to the ownership of the US Government to create a new embassy complex. Point