Rīga promises to tackle Old Town ghost town

Still empty and dirty - in the Old Town, ground-floor shop windows have looked abandoned in many places for at least a couple of years. Their windows and doors are decorated with brightly colored "For Rent" signs. To tackle the problem, Riga City Council is considering changes to its property tax policy, Latvian Radio reports July 5.

The Riga City Council is a few minutes' walk from the Latvian Radio House. In that space, four empty and even dusty shop windows can be spotted. In a few windows, cobwebs are noticeable. They can all be seen on Tirgoņu and Šķūņu Streets. The same is true elsewhere in the Old Town, where the owners have been unable to find tenants for a couple of years. What is the municipality doing, how do they plan to solve the problem?

Inese Andersone (New Unity), head of the Riga City Council's Urban Development Committee, said that the municipality plans to start rebuilding one of the busiest streets in Old Riga in the second half of next year. After at least a year of construction work, Vaļņu Street will become a car-free pedestrian street.

"The primary investment we are making is in the marketing of both the Old Town and the city. To attract tourism, €1.5 million has been invested in promoting Riga as a destination. Different events are taking place - we are focusing on Old Town. This year we also plan to come up with more ambitious landscaping to show a more pleasant urban environment, and we are launching a serious investment project for the redevelopment of Vaļņu Street and also Kaļķu Street," said Andersone.

The municipality is spending at least half a million euros more this year than last year on marketing abroad. Compared to 2019, when there were many more tourists in Rīga, the funding for marketing has even increased several times.

To reduce the number of empty shop windows in Rīga, the municipality is proposing a change in property tax policy, although nothing concrete is being proposed yet.

It is unlikely that a single solution will be found to bring entrepreneurs back to the Old Town. The municipality needs to talk to every owner of an empty shopfront, said Ēriks Lingebērziņš, the ambassador of the European Association of Travel Agents and Tour Operators and assistant professor at Turiba Business School, welcoming the municipality's spending on marketing:

"The situation in the Old Town is a kind of mirror of the economic situation because it is clear that there are as many locals as there are, and we clearly see that we simply need tourists and foreign tourists who are willing to stay and spend money. I would say that between the directions that the council originally proposed - to see whether the fees should be increased or reduced - then perhaps the solution is to go both ways at once."

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