The Riga municipality should be given the opportunity to apply an increased property tax for abandoned buildings, said Riga Mayor Viesturs Kleinbergs on the '900 Seconds' program on TV3.
He noted that otherwise the city cannot cope with either the abandoned building on Marijas Street or with investors who have frozen a number of projects.
Kleinbergs reported that he has approached the Ministry of Finance with such an initiative.
As the LETA agency reported in February of this year, over the past ten years, the municipality has not been able to make significant progress in bringing the abandoned building at Marijas Street 6 into order.
The building on Marijas Street has been in a state of abandonment since at least 1999, when the windows on the first floor were boarded up to prevent outsiders from entering and putting their lives at risk. In 2008, a fire occurred in the abandoned building, and in 2009, the cornice of one of the windows collapsed.
In January 2015, the building at the intersection of Marijas and Elizabetes Streets was assigned the status of a building that degrades the urban environment, meaning it is an abandoned property. In April 2018, the city council ruled to carry out forced works to bring the building into order.
