Photo: Society for the preservation of NeymarWaiting to be protected, the old part of Belgrade, Neimar, is disappearing day by day. The villa of the architect Ivan Antić's family was also demolished yesterday. The law allows developers to demolish valuable buildings even though they do not have a permit to do so
In the street Internacionalnih brigada 47 on Neimar in Vračar, a villa from 1930 that belonged to the family of Ivan Antić, a respected architect, was demolished to the ground yesterday, because according to the law and institutions, profit is more important than architectural and cultural value.
The government cannot make a decision on the protection of Neymar, so all the villas on Neymar are at the mercy of companies that are only interested in getting the large lots on which these villas were built, that is, to demolish them and build a multi-story building in their place.
Antič's villa was owned by the Finnish Embassy, which offered it to DIPOS, a state institution that deals with the issuance and maintenance of state real estate, and the City of Belgrade. Since neither the state nor the City had an interest in buying it, Finland offered it to the free market.
At the end of 2017, it was bought by the company "Fimiko Invest", and during the following year, the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments began the valorization of the Kotež-Neimara area. Antič's villa was valorized as an object of special value, which means it had the status of previous protection. It extended her life by three years.
As soon as the previous protection ended, the new owner of Antić's villa started the demolition on November 13, 2021, at 6 a.m. He did not have a demolition permit. By the time the neighbors woke up to the noise of the excavator and called the police and the inspectorate, more than half of the building had collapsed. At the moment when the inspection closed the construction site, only the facade remained of the house.
The facade was also demolished yesterday.
It was so solid and beautiful that people did not have the impression that it was only a front, only a backdrop, and that behind it was a pile of rubble. It is not excluded that they decided to demolish in order to preempt the decision on the protection of Neymar.
The Law on Planning and Construction states in Article 168 that the removal of the building can only be done after obtaining a demolition permit. Two years ago, when everything was demolished except the facade of Antić's villa, the company "Fimiko Invest" did not have a demolition permit.
Associations of citizens dealing with the preservation of environmental units - the Society for the Arrangement and Beautification of the Crown Wreath, and the Society for the Preservation of Neymar, immediately, that is, two years ago, tried to restore the building to its original state, but without results. The Prosecutor's Office rejected them, because the Law on Planning and Construction in its final provisions does not prescribe a penalty for demolition without a permit.
In the law that prescribes a mandatory permit for demolition, it is not specified what will happen to the person who demolishes the house even though he is not allowed to do so.
It is another "loophole" that benefits private interests and not public ones. The demolishers could not be prosecuted either because the Criminal Code does not recognize demolishing one's own property without permission as a criminal act. Since the Decision on the Protection of Neymar was not adopted, the Law on the Protection of Cultural Property could not be applied to Antič's villa either. In short, the institutions failed Antic's villa.
The only thing that the citizens' associations succeeded in doing was lowering the four-story building (P+3+Ps) by one floor so that the new building would fit into the surroundings at least a little, and to reduce the area from over 1700m2 of the original project to about 1450m2.
The reduction of the area is the biggest penalty for the investor.
After that process, the investor received a building permit, and as part of it, a permit to demolish the remaining part of Antic's villa, its facade.
Neimar, the old part of Belgrade, is gradually disappearing.
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