The Board of Directors of the public business entity Puertos Canarios has agreed this Monday to grant the Cabildo of Lanzarote the concession of public port domain of the Playa del Cable pier, in Arrecife, known as Marina Colón.
The investment that the Cabildo plans to carry out in this pier for nautical-sports facilities amounts to 264,487 euros and the concession will be made for a period of 10 years, with an annual fee of 1,000 euros.
The decision adopted this Monday comes almost a year after a controversy opened over the management of this space. At the beginning of 2013, the Cabildo requested the concession of Marina Colón, but after publishing this request in the Official Gazette, a private initiative arose claiming the same concession. That second proposal, publicly defended by César Miralles from Lanzarote, included the opening of a cafeteria-restaurant, three gym rooms and a nautical school with a training classroom, compared to the Cabildo's commitment to allocate this dock to sailing sports.
At the time, Miralles demanded the call for a "clean" public tender and even later offered the possibility of combining both initiatives in this space, something that was rejected by the Cabildo. Now, finally Puertos has announced the concession to the Island Corporation, which will manage this space for the next ten years.
Cafeteria, training room and storage areas
As the Cabildo explained almost a year ago, the public project for Marina Colón was "designed and created in 2011" and includes storage spaces for the different boats, meeting room, training room, offices, cafeteria, changing rooms and lockers. In addition, it is intended to rehabilitate and redistribute the center and its adjoining premises, improve security, paving and beautify the exteriors.
The president of the Cabildo, Pedro San Ginés, pointed out then that the intention was to make Marina Colón "a center open to the entire population that brings together all the services and infrastructures for the practice of a multitude of sports and activities at sea such as canoeing, windsurfing, diving, Latin and light sailing in its multiple modalities", as well as "improve the service currently provided by the Insular Center for Nautical Sports", which has more than 3,500 users and is currently "congested and collapsed in large part by Latin sailing".
After the pulse that was generated with the businessman César Miralles to obtain this concession, the public project received support from different associations, with letters of support from the Wrestling Federation, the Bowling and Petanque Federation, the Canarian Federation of Latin Sailing Boats, the Canarian Federation of Latin Sailing Barquillos, the Insular Federation of Latin Sailing Barquillos of Fuerteventura and Lanzarote, the Sociedad Democracia, the Sociedad Torrelavega and the Casa del Miedo, among others.
