The In Valmalenco Integrated Territorial Investment (I.T.I.) project has been officially presented, it involves the municipalities of Chiesa in Valmalenco, Caspoggio, Lanzada and Spriana, and aims at the smart and eco-sustainable development of the valley.
Let’s know better about a fundamental aspect of this initiative, the Società di Progetto, from the words of Fabio Viganò – Board Member SdP In Valmalenco (CISA srl).
- What is meant by Società di Progetto?
The Società di Progetto (SDP) is a legal entity structured financially and structurally in an adequate and efficient way to deal with the challenging multi-year project such as the one to be activated in the valley.
“In Valmalenco SRL” was therefore created with this purpose, to be flexible and as operational as possible but at the same time transparent to the grantor.
- How is it structured?
In Valmalenco is a “B-CORP” (Certified B Corporation) that, in the exercise of an economic activity pursues one or more purposes of common benefit and operates in a responsible, sustainable and transparent way towards people, communities, territories and environment, cultural and social goods and activities, bodies and associations and other stakeholders.
The office has been identified within the municipality of Chiesa, the project leader, in a strategic location to be also a showcase for citizens, tourists and stakeholders of the projects that will be created on the 4 municipalities.
In Valmalenco will have a strict code of ethics and will take all inclusive measures in order to protect the rights of each enabled target. It will be itself a “Living Lab” of territorial development and innovation also through the involvement and training of the technicians of the member Administrations while acting as an experimental platform of ideas, processes and projects and an operational gym for the triggering of all the experimental projects identified in the matrix in addition to the strong involvement of the territory’s stakeholders.
The organizational structure will maintain a streamlined and flexible form in order to minimize operational management costs.
- What will it do concretely for Valmalenco and its member municipalities? How long will it be operational?
Our job is to ground the projects, then support the entities administratively and technically in finding the best procedural path and funding sources to implement the infrastructure. We are always supporting, never replacing the Administrations and their technical offices. Our role can make up for the reduction in staff and the resulting increase in work for the agencies’ offices.
- What are the main projects around which the I.T.I. revolves? Have any already been initiated?
The pivotal project is definitely the regeneration of Primolo.
A highly innovative and characterizing specific project, Primolo will thus become the physical place where interventions and remedies to structural dysfunctions and territorial imbalances in the Alpine space, such as climate change, theorized in the frameworks of European Alpine space programs (EUSALP, Alpine Space, Argealp, etc….) will be implemented. Thus, the organization and development of higher education courses, postgraduate master’s degrees, socio-economic research laboratories, and summer schools will attract students, professors, doctoral students, and researchers from the European Alpine valleys.
A true attractor pole capable of:
- prevent the depopulation of the Valley;
- attract new high-spending users;
- deseasonalize tourism.
The project, of course, will affect each Valmalenco municipality according to their specificities: Caspoggio can become the valley’s “City of well-being and wellbeing” in response to a new range of services and opportunities that it intends to develop or has already developed in part, to boost tourist presences and revitalize the community, also with a view to pushing for repopulation or tourism revitalization; Lanzada has the potential to be the hub of outdoor sports in the Valmalenco thanks to a high quality and prominent sports offer will have to develop a specificity linked to the development of a sports tourism offer both for the winter season and, and above all, linked to deseasonalization and spring, summer and autumn sports tourism; the municipality of Spriana, finally, has the characteristics to represent the showcase of Malenco history, landscape and traditions, starting from the immense historical-secular heritage and traditions of Valmalenco represents something to be enhanced by linking it to another receptive engine such as food. A new development of Spriana addressed to repopulation and urban regeneration through structural interventions that enhance its peculiarities but are able to ensure attractiveness at the tourist level and semistanciality thanks to the inclusion within new circuits of technological development.
This is a medium- to long-term project, we are about to start scouting for empty properties, we have initiated relations with various European universities that have immediately shown their eagerness to collaborate in this project. Digitization will be fundamental in creating this path, digital systems are necessary both for citizenship and for the creation of new services, also in function of the objective of working on the attractiveness of the area through the introduction of new economic actors also in function of new tourist and/or residential flows.
- Once the Services Project Financing process is concluded, what will be the future of this Società di Progetto?
With a view to developing the skills and resources of the territory to prepare the next generation, our proposal is to hand over at the end of the concession, the operating company and its organization to the territory itself in order to be classified as a real Territorial Observatory.
