An illegal dump for years, soon a park of 71,000 square metres. The site by the last stop of the number 5 in Novo Lisice, right next to the House of Football, is finally getting a purpose other than the one the rubble trucks gave it themselves.

Construction was launched today by Skopje mayor Orce Gjorgjievski and Aerodrom municipality mayor Dejan Miteski. Around 1,000 trees are planned - over 800 deciduous, the rest evergreen - plus access paths, children's play areas and spaces to rest and socialise.

"Where there was an illegal dump for years, we are creating a space for life, for children's smiles, for walks and for generations to spend time together," Gjorgjievski announced. With this park, he says, Skopje reaches around 200,000 square metres of park greenery.

The promise has a date, and that date is 2021

This is good news and there is no need to spin it any other way. But there is also a history worth knowing.

The promise that this exact stretch would become a park and link the two existing parks along ASNOM Boulevard was made in 2021, when Timco Mucunski was a candidate for mayor of Aerodrom. Two and a half years later he became foreign minister, Dejan Miteski succeeded him as acting mayor and was then elected in the 2024 local elections. The dump remained a dump for another five years after the promise.

The two neighbouring parks tell the story

The Avionce park got its modern look in 2013 through a full reconstruction - playgrounds, a basketball court, walking and cycling paths, the carousel. Today one of its cafés is operating, while the larger one is waiting for a new concession holder to be selected, who is meant to install new play equipment.

In the park at the last number 5 stop, opened in the summer of 2016, the most recent addition was the community garden - small plots citizens can rent and plant. The other part, with its gazebos, benches and bins, is a regular target for vandalism.

That is the pattern. It gets built, it gets opened, it gets photographed - and the upkeep is left to the weather. If the new 1,000 trees go through two summers without an irrigation system, there will be neither shade nor park.

And one unresolved question

When the BRT bus system in Skopje is delivered, where will the terminus on this stretch be? Will part of the new park be sacrificed then, or part of the existing one? The same question applies to the route along which Fevruarski Pohod Boulevard is meant to continue to the new bridge Gjorgjievski announced, connecting Aerodrom and Gazi Baba.

Planting a tree is easy. Planting it somewhere the next project will not cut it down - that is planning.