The leader of the urban development committee in Oslo expects City Councilor Hanna Marcussen to clean up the housing scandal at Storo.
The online newspaper wrote last week about how 58 families at Storo have been refused to move into the apartments that are waiting for them. Six years of clutter between the developer Grefsen Utvikling and the Planning and Building Agency in Oslo is the reason:
The parties have not been able to agree on a footbridge over Ring 3 that was to be completed before a move could take place. The planning authorities refuse to grant more exemptions in this project, and a bridge can be completed in a year and a half at the earliest.
That 58 families now risk waiting a long time for a move, makes the leader of the urban development committee Hermann Kopp (H) react strongly. The developer Grefsen Utvikling has offered both a bank guarantee and an implementation guarantee as security for the bridge. This is a guarantee that the planning authorities will not accept for the time being.
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– The guarantees must be enough
– When they provide a bank guarantee and an implementation guarantee to the municipality, it must be enough. That the Planning and Building Agency does not accept this, I think is simply shameful. I am firmly convinced that the agency and other municipal agencies must take their share of the blame for the delay, says Kopp to Nettavisen Økonomi.
– And this is not a developer with poor finances, a bankrupt. We are not talking about a developer who builds on speculation. Here we are talking about Bane NOR Eiendom, a state-owned company that you will not suspect will go bankrupt at all, he continues.
Hanna Marcussen (MDG), the City Development Agency, has the political responsibility in the case. We will return to her answer, but Kopp expects action from the city council.
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Must be instructed
– What does Marcussen have to do?
– She must cut through and ask the planning authorities to accept the guarantee, and that the necessary guarantees are provided for the bridge to be built.
– How the guarantee is provided is the same. But a guarantee from Bane NOR Eiendom and their partners is a full guarantee. Now the city council must ensure that the residents can move in, Kopp answers.
– And if Marcussen does not come with this instruction?
– Then I must say that it disappoints me. And it is unfortunately a fact that we have a red-green city council that balances on a knife edge with support from Red. It’s hard to get things through. The city council parties are very loyal, they rarely go against the city council even in small rags. I want more consensus in construction matters.
Framework permit
On 23 April, the Planning and Building Authority issued a so-called framework permit for the construction of the bridge, but no start-up permit. It has been suggested that a bridge can be completed in the fourth quarter of 2022 at the earliest. As the case now stands, there will be no move-in before that. In the meantime, families have to rent expensively.
Kopp says he has also understood it so that some of the bridge area must first be extended to Oslo municipality. He understands that this is a process that takes time. The online newspaper knows that the residents themselves are not happy with the bridge, because they get it right by the verandas.
Kopp himself received inquiries last week from desperate residents. He says he saw this was a matter that had to be resolved immediately. On Friday, he had a meeting with the developer Grefsen Utvikling, and he has sent an email to Hanna Marcussen asking him to take action.
– I also asked questions about this issue at the meeting of the urban development committee last Wednesday. I reckon that Marcussen and the city council secretary Rasmus Reinvang will sort things out, says Kopp.
Extraordinary meeting
On Wednesday, there will be an extraordinary meeting of the urban development committee and a city council meeting immediately afterwards. Kopp promises that the issue will be a topic during these meetings.
– Some have used the term molboland when you are unable to sort out such a case. I agree, because this is a case involving an innocent third party.
– I believe that the ombudsman role is the most important role we have as politicians. It is to take things up and sort them out when for some reason it fails, and here it fails, says Kopp.
Spends a long time
He is also concerned about the long case processing time for the planning authorities in Oslo. Many developers experience that they have had very many caseworkers, and that they have to start again every time.
– The cases take a very long time, the latest Kostra statistics The processing of regulatory cases takes three times longer in Oslo than in Bergen. Then something is not right, says Kopp from Bergen.
Hanna Marcussen tells Nettavisen that she has great sympathy with the home buyers who have come into this unjustifiably and are not allowed to move in.
– But the developer has been responsible for building the bridge since the zoning plan’s decision in 2008. It is the developer who has chosen to bear the risk of having sold the apartments before they had the necessary permits, says the city councilor.
Poor security
– Why can the proposed guarantees not be approved?
– The Planning and Building Authority does not consider that the solutions proposed provide the municipality with sufficient assurance that the footbridge will actually be in place under the auspices of the developer. All parties want the bridge to be built and for home buyers to be allowed to move in.
– Therefore, we hope for a quick solution from the developer, and I expect the agency to follow up quickly, Marcussen answers.
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