[YouTube]

I honestly lost track of what’s happening to the Massaad stairs and the nearby green space as I thought they were threatened by the Fouad Boutros highway, not a new building. To recap quickly, Mar Mikhail residents are against the “Hekmeh-Turk”, which is basically the planned Fouad Boutros road and wish to turn the green space mentioned in the LBC report to a public garden not a fancy building.

To be honest, I think it’s better if we have a public garden there as the last thing we need is a new building, but I think residents and the NGOs protesting against these projects need to be more pragmatic in their approach. For example, the abandoned green space that they want to turn into a public garden is abandoned, dirty and I’ve never seen anyone there. A good way to convince the municipality or to put more pressure is by organizing campaigns and get volunteers to clean and revamp the green space. That way if people start going there more frequently, it will be easier to organize protests and convince the municipality to change its plans.

In all cases, I am fully supportive of any petition to save Beirut from another ugly building and build a new public garden instead. Here’s a link to the [Petition].