Knowing that there is resistance in the Wide Front Regarding the housing megaproject planned by the previous government for Médanos de Solymar, the Canelones Municipality asked the developers of the initiative to reduce the heights of the tallest towers above the Giannattasio Avenue.
“The idea of this departmental government, in a normal and limited time while the Departmental Board meets with those responsible, is to study it in greater depth and without any doubt propose modifications so that some heights are reviewed,” he declared to The Observer the general secretary of the commune, Pedro Irigoin.
The MPP leader announced that they will also require “impact studies” that, although they could “request them later,” they will “bring them forward in time.” “We need better data on the impacts on traffic; the mayor’s office is going to do a study with Udelar to see the economic impacts in the area and we want to specify a little more the sanitation work that they are going to do for the environment,” Irigoin explained.
The megaproject of 21 buildings developed by architects Carlos Ott and Carlos Ponce De León – and whose construction will be carried out by Cujó and HMR Desarrollos – concentrates the tallest towers of between 12 and 13 floors on Giannattasio Avenue.
The bench of Frente-Amplista councilors expressed doubts internally about building such large structures in a spa that does not have high-rise buildings. Although the first version of the project presented to the National Housing Agency (ANV) meant that almost all the buildings were nine stories high, the developers introduced modifications to “distribute the height” with the lowest buildings in the background – above the Pinasol housing complex – and the tallest towers towards the avenue.
The architect Ponce De León described at the Departmental Board at the end of January that it had been his own Yamandu Orsi as the Canarian mayor who “understood at that moment that it could be viable” to allow them “more height”, although they would have to “study it” later in the framework of the debate with the councilors.
In this sense, the The intention of the Municipality is that there are no buildings that exceed ten floors.
The coordinator of the Frente Amplio in the City of the Coast in fact began a round of consultations with councilors of the ruling party and groups in the area.
“We want the project to be done,” remarked the number two of the Canelones Municipality when asked about possible modifications to an initiative endorsed by Orsi. “Our idea is not at all to fill Giannattasio and the promenade with buildings, but there are specific projects in some special places that are good to contemplate. In this case, the urban area is stretched to an area that was already planned for urban growth, which is not going to rural land,” Irigoin argued and estimated that it will “probably” take a year “to see the first stage completed.”
“We cannot think that by enabling this, 200 buildings will be built, that is not the intention and there is no market for that either. If we had two or three of these in the Atlántida area it would be great, it is looking for those types of investments that are within the planning that governments have made in the last 20 years,” defended the secretary general.
Irigoin acknowledged that in the Board “it begins to get a little complicated” from the request for greater height and the change of national and departmental authorities that fell in the middle. “It is one of the big procedures that suffers a little from the natural fact that a period was ending, that data was missing and that it was wanted to be analyzed well,” he admitted.
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The “skeleton of a dead elephant”
The general secretary of Francisco Legnani’s administration assured that they do not want to rush the councilors and that they will respect the work of the Board commission that studies the exceptions. “We are on a property where there is a skeleton of a dead elephant because there was not good decision-making and execution by the governments at that time so that it does not remain as it did,” he stated.
The field of more than seven hectares has been full of unfinished skeletons for more than 20 years. For years the land was a floodplain, until in 2001 Banco Hipotecario transferred it to the construction company Fernando Barboni SA to build a housing complex of 76 homes. The 2002 crisis precipitated difficulties during the course of the works and, after a long push and pull, culminated in the definitive termination of the contracts in April 2005.
Today the properties are under the orbit of the ANV, whose previous board signed in February 2025 the Framework Agreement for the sale and purchase of the land for 21.3 million indexed units – equivalent to about US$ 3.4 million at current value – and the future delivery of 27 apartments in favor of the ANV by the Giannattasio Consortium.
The megaproject for that area will entail an estimated investment of US$100 million and it is estimated that the complete construction of all stages of the work may take up to nine years.
