The renowned architect Juan Herreros explains that the Vinival wineries have a "privileged enclave", located as they are between the northern orchard of Valencia and its always beautiful beach. When driving along the V-21, they can be seen as that imposing building that the residents of Alboraia have ended up calling “the Kremlin” due to its robust shapes, and also when walking parallel to the coast. Its vaults dominate the landscape.
The winery, abandoned and without regulatory protection, is located in the middle of the enclosure that the developer Metrovacesa plans to turn into a new neighborhood by the Madrid architect.
And there is the idea that it be a "pioneer building" at a European level, providing its interior with content, collecting the spirit of other industrial projects that have ended up being benchmark spaces: this is the case of the Alhóndiga de Bilbao, an old wine warehouse built in 1909 that was abandoned after a fire a few years later or, already in the Valencian Community, the recent Bombas Gens, current art center after being built as a factory for hydraulic pumps in 1930.
Although the company's proposal draws from that essence, they are still thinking about how to do it. Especially for its economic viability. And this is also where neighborhood concern comes in because the Association of residents of La Patacona, contrary to the dimension of the project proposed by Metrovacesa, does not trust the company's intentions with respect to the old warehouses.
"We are afraid that in the long run they will put a shopping center or a hotel, because it has to be viable to maintain such an extremely large building. If that happens, the problems we have will be many more," Ana López explains to La Vanguardia , its spokesperson. The neighborhood platform is against the urban project as it is conceived, although they clarify that "they are not against urbanizing the area, but rather doing it at any price," she qualifies.
The neighborhood association in question has raised various allegations to the project (it has been waiting for a response to the latest ones since September, they say) and has even designed two alternatives: the neighborhood that it imagines with or without warehouses. "Deep down, we don't care if the wineries stay or not, it's not the question, but what we don't want to give up is public space."
In the proposal with warehouses, the neighbors imagine that it "loosely" houses a large supermarket such as Mercadona or Consum, and various stores such as butchers, greengrocers, hardware stores, a shoe store, a stationery store, etc. Also, a municipal office, a police checkpoint, a cultural center, a library, an exhibition hall, a small auditorium, among others. "In La Patacona we do not have shops because there are no commercial floors, we live in Malvarrosa de València, with a shopping center next door that we cannot walk to and to which we go by car. All of this has not been contemplated either," laments López.
In the proposal that they imagine without warehouses, the space they occupy becomes a square that would be the center where most of the social, recreational, and commercial life of La Patacona and therefore of Alboraia would take place.
However, from the company they explain that there is currently no specific future use for the magnanimous building, but they do aspire to turn it into a cultural, sports venue, open to various uses.
Students from the Polytechnic University of Valencia as well as from the Berlin School of Architecture are working on this idea, to whom they have sent the building's protection sheet so that they can make their contributions. The "transgenerational" nature of the project, which will meet the demands of the future neighborhood, are some of the details that the construction company is clear about, they confirm.
The building will be rehabilitated, although the times are still long. At the moment, the project will be processed between 2023 and 2024 and the idea is to begin construction in 2025. In the meantime, there is a manifest interest in publicizing the project and involving the public that the building will also be "a bit of all". The bad experience with the Benimaclet PAI has encouraged the company to "better" explain its projects to get closer to the public.
For this reason, a few months ago, a small group of people, participants in the Open House Valencia architecture festival, were allowed to enter its interior for the first time. The director of the festival, Sara Portela, tells how in three hours more than 200 people entered and it became the third most visited building of the festival, behind Espai Verd and Palauet Nolla.
"What is striking is the shape, the monumentality of the building. It stands out for its monumentality, for the shape it has, and it is a precursor of the brand model, when architecture is used as a symbol," explains the specialist, who advocates for allocating the property for cultural use.
"It would be important for it to be protected and rehabilitated, because there are not such large places where you can hold events, it has a lot of space around it and it would be a great opportunity," says the architect. Portela would also assume to promote its protection from Open House Valencia to achieve a patrimonial result at the level of Bombas Gens or, already in Barcelona, of the old Estrella Damm factory.
