Thirty-three square kilometers of free or disused areas, classified according to strategic parameters such as the distance from motorway toll booths or port junctions, size of the site and the possibility of expansion, intended use, state of conservation of buildings, connected services or ultra-broadband availability. This is the mapping that Confindustria Piemonte worked on to survey former industrial centers or factories available, with one goal: to encourage investments, make contacts with potential investors easier, speed up procedures for the redevelopment of areas, in a logistical or green key, revitalize areas unused, limiting land consumption and promoting urban regeneration processes.
The initiative on 560 areas
The initiative covers a total of over 560 areas in all the Piedmontese provinces, 263 free and 301 abandoned. And its objective is to focus on one hundred areas – “100 Areas for Piedmont” – to be included in a real catalog of the localization offer for new production sites, divided into a selection of the most attractive areas available, selected according to objective parameters of attractiveness, associated with a web platform for geo-referenced consultation of the selected sites. “We want to contribute to the reconversion of these sites – explains Cristina Manara of Confindustria Piemonte – not only from an industrial point of view but also for the tertiary sector or crafts, driven by new needs that emerged after the pandemic which in fact favor reshoring initiatives or investments for the creation of logistics hubs closer to customers “.
Collaboration with the Region
The collaboration with the Piedmont Region aims to define a vademecum or a regulation on documents and bureaucratic times to simplify the procedures, once the potentially attractive sites have been identified. In general, then, the Cirio Council has wagered 45 million European resources for the attraction of investments in the Piedmont area. The start of the project coincides with the new programming phase of European funds and crosses the resources of the NRP, therefore potential resources to address, for example, the need for land reclamation and remediation or to relaunch projects related to the Hydrogen Valley, for example.
The previous
The experience has an important precedent, the collaboration with the Municipality of Turin and the metropolitan area in the “Trentametro” Project, the Dossier of settlement opportunities with the 30 most attractive sites available on the market. “An experience that is working – adds Manara – and which already has a dozen sites acquired or recovered.” Confindustria, together with local associations, has been working for years on the areas to be reindustrialized and has collaborated with Finpiemonte or Ceip on some dossiers “of success “such as the new Kering logistics hub in Trecate, the Amazon distribution centers in Novara, Alessandria, Vercelli and Torrazza, the Lidl national logistics hub in Carmagnola, the purchase by the German intermodal company CargoBeamer of areas in the Domo2 railway yard of Domodossola, the acquisition by Lannutti of a large area in Fossano, the two investments for 600 thousand square meters of “Tortona Green Logistics Park” (Aquila Capital) and of Cascina Zerba in Castellazzo Bormida (Pragaquattro Center Siing Spa) for a total of 270 thousand square meters of new warehouses.