Opponents of the demolition of Sušice's Sola sent an appeal to the Minister of Culture

Sušice (Klatovy) - An open letter Save the Sušice match factory was sent today to the Minister of Culture by the civic initiative We from Sušice, backed by nearly 1,400 local citizens since April 2014, which is about 30 percent of the voters in the city. They are reacting to the fact that the ministry did not approve heritage protection for the dilapidated buildings of the former Solo factory, where production ended in 2008. The Šumava Museum, along with opponents of the construction of a shopping center that is to be built on the site of the factory, requested heritage protection in 2013. We from Sušice want the minister to save the intact complex of the factory from demolition, the association stated in a letter that was also sent to ČTK.

"We feel very serious concerns about the future of the buildings and the genius loci of the former match factory in Sušice, which were proposed for heritage protection, but your ministry ultimately, according to the information available to us, did not declare them in a complex with coherent values, which representatives of the owners and investors of the grotesque project for the construction of a new shopping center on the site of the former match factory openly 'predicted' in advance,” stated the representatives of the association in the letter. According to them, only "those parts that the developer can incorporate into their plans are designated for the heritage protection of the former Sušice match factory, but they will mainly lack substantial context and urban and architectural quality much higher than that of supermarket models."

"Dear Mr. Minister, therefore we turn to you to once again assess the seriousness of the whole situation as a very significant guarantor of the protection of cultural heritage in the Czech Republic and possibly accept our invitation to the site itself, so you can hear that part of society that has not yet been given a complete and free voice,” the initiative stated.

The investor of the planned shopping center is Fuertes Development from Kuřim, which, according to its manager Zdeněk Přichystal, has already invested several million crowns into the preparation. If the ministry rejects Solo as a monument, Fuertes will purchase the properties and land from the owner, the Brno group Solo Matches & Flames, immediately after obtaining the zoning decision. The investor has previously offered to preserve the villa of the former management at the roundabout and the administrative building on Nádražní Street, which could become a school or hotel. If Solo were to become a monument, the owner would, according to Přichystal, not invest in the buildings, but would only secure them.