Hanoi - A hotel project in a popular Hanoi park is to be
relocated following a public campaign, Vietnamese press said
Wednesday, but city officials would not confirm the reports.
An article in the state-run Thanh Nien newspaper said construction
of a Novotel hotel located inside Hanoi's Reunification Park would
not be completed and that the Hanoi People's Committee, the city's
governing body, was reviewing alternative sites for the project.
The hotel project has sparked widespread opposition from
architects and citizens' groups concerned about loss of scarce Hanoi
parkland, making it a rare occasion of spontaneous public activism in
Vietnam.
Nguyen Van Thanh, deputy head of the Office of the Hanoi People's
Committee, would not confirm that a decision had been made.
'We have not had any official information about canceling the
project,' Thanh told the German Press Agency dpa.
In an interview published Tuesday by the news website VietnamNet,
Hanoi People's Committee chairman Nguyen The Thao said investors in
the project were cooperating by halting construction while the city
sought a different site.
'The aspiration of local authorities and of the people is to
preserve this land in order to carry out a plan to turn it into green
parkland at an appropriate time,' Thao said.
Landscape architect Tran Thi Thanh Van, whose February letter to
the Hanoi People's Committee touched off the popular campaign against
the hotel, told
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