The new leadership of Pardubice will return to the project of the Jan Kašpar memorial

Pardubice - The new leadership of Pardubice wants to reconsider the construction of a memorial to aviator Jan Kašpar on třída Míru. The city already selected a winning design in a competition in 2013, but the project was halted by the city council last summer due to high costs. According to Mayor Martin Charvát, there should be a reminder of Jan Kašpar in the center of Pardubice, but he is not convinced that the chosen design is the right one.
    "The author of the winning project reached out to me asking if the new city leadership is considering realization. I will meet with him, the city leadership will study all available materials and then we will take a position based on weighing all the pros and cons," Charvát told ČTK.
    The jury selected the best proposal from architect Petr Pinkas in the form of a 37-meter tall column with a wind sleeve and a signal. The original estimate for the memorial was 1.2 million crowns, but due to its complicated installation, it later increased to 2.7 million crowns. The column would need to be anchored down to the bedrock, which is twelve meters deep.
    The situation is further complicated by the current expensive renovation of třída Míru, for which the city obtained European funding. "At this moment, it is clear that to anchor the memorial column, machinery would need to access třída Míru, which the newly laid pavement cannot support," Charvát stated.
    The city spent 425,300 crowns on prizes for the winners of the architectural competition, the jurors, the exhibition, and the catalog. The city hall paid 370,000 crowns for the project documentation of the winning proposal.
    Local aviators previously opposed Petr Pinkas's proposal with a petition, and it also did not appeal to Kašpar's biographer Pavel Sviták. They would prefer the second proposal, a realistic bronze statue of the aviator with a giant propeller of the Blériot.