Ilsur Metshin plants trees in a new park on Volkova Street

The eighth season of Tom Sawyer Fest Kazan has ended in the capital of Tatarstan. This year, with the support of the sponsors of the festival, volunteers began to improve the Old Kazan Yard square on Volkova Street. Together with the volunteers, the Mayor of Kazan Ilsur Metshin planted trees today, and also donated the first floor of house No. 80/21 to the headquarters of volunteers.

Olesya Baltusova, aide to the Rais (Head) of the republic of Tatarstan, said that this year the square was designed, cleaning the territory from weeds was carried out. It is planned to install lighting, a fence and exhibit part of the restored window casing that will decorate the square within a month.

The new facility is called the Old Kazan Yard not by chance. Benches, horizontal bars will be hand-made for the yard, as well as window casings for the future street museum will be restored.

“The season is ending, and we are still continuing work in the square. The first stage has been completed, next year we will start the second. It turns out that many architects during the years of the demolition of the old houses being resettled retained their window casings. We collect them from all over the city and plan to exhibit them in the park, and we will print their history next to it,”- Olesya Baltusova noted.

The Mayor of Kazan supported the idea of creating a museum of window casings. He also drew attention to the landscaping of the square: “It is necessary to carry out lighting so that there are street lights with a motion sensor.”

Then Ilsur Metshin, Olesya Baltusova and volunteers of Tom Sawyer Fest Kazan started landscaping the square and planted trees and shrubs. The volunteers thanked Ilsur Metshin for his help in creating the square.

After landscaping the territory, Ilsur Metshin inspected the restored house. This year, volunteers painted the façade and reinforced the firewall. Next year it is planned to decorate it with graffiti. When creating the mural, Ilsur Metshin asked to preserve the identity of the old Kazan: “Since this is the center, it is necessary to preserve the identity of the old Kazan. It is necessary that the mural educate all those who come here.”

The owner of the apartment on the second floor of the house on Volkova Street Konstantin Lebedev asked Ilsur Metshin to help in the design of the first floor. Ilsur Metshin instructed to transfer the first floor to the headquarters of volunteers Tom Sawyer Fest Kazan.

“Thanks to Olesya Baltysova and the team of volunteers for preserving the heritage and for making a huge contribution to the preservation of historical Kazan. Under the leadership of Rustam Minnikhanov we began this path cautiously before the Universiade, when the amount of devastation was huge. Now we have preserved and restored about 300 buildings of Kazan, some houses still need restoration. We could handle this work thanks to people like you,”- the Mayor of Kazan addressed the audience.

Ilsiyar Tukhvatullina, the chief architect of the city of Kazan, proposed to hold Summer Dialogues in the new square.

Ilsur Metshin thanked all those involved in the work and expressed gratitude to the general partner of the project Ruslan Kovalyov.