The Regional Military Administration does not know when work on the reconstruction of Gymnasium №2 in Mykolaiv will resume

Restoration work on the historic façade of Gymnasium №2 in Mykolaiv, 2024, photo by NikVesti

The Mykolaiv Regional Military Administration does not know when the reconstruction of Mykolaiv Gymnasium №2 will resume.

This is reported in the article by NikVesti entitled «Reconstruction of the gymnasium in the centre of Mykolaiv has been put on hold. Why has the funding run out?».

The reason is not just a lack of funds, said Andrii Hreits, director of the Regional Military Administration’s Department of Architecture. According to him, in order to be eligible for state funding, the project must be included in the Unified Portfolio of Public Investments. The city authorities are currently working on this.

Advertising

«It is impossible to say with 100 per cent certainty whether funding will be available this year or not. Now, in the third quarter, the city must include the gymnasium in the list of public investment projects. If the project is included in the portfolio, it will become a priority for the state, and then we will again request funds to continue the work,» he explained.

The administration adds that Gymnasium №2 is not the only project to find itself in this situation.

«Last year, the state assured us that the fund would be financed in 2026. But that did not happen. It is now empty, and this project is not the only one that has not received funding. “Unfortunately, nothing at all has been allocated across the whole of Ukraine, because this fund is empty. Whether the situation will change next year will become clear in the autumn, when the state budget is drawn up,» said Andrii Hreits.

It should be recalled that in Mykolaiv, the reconstruction of Gymnasium №2, which was damaged by shelling, has been halted because there were no funds in the 2026 state budget to complete the work.

At the same time, Mykolaiv’s budget lacks the funds to complete the restoration of the school. Mayor Oleksandr Sienkevych hopes that the new government, which includes former Regional State Administration head Vitalii Kim, will help secure the necessary funding.

Restoration of Gymnasium №2

The issue of restoring Gymnasium №2 had been raised even before the full-scale invasion. In March 2021, the gymnasium building was declared structurally unsafe. A petition was then launched on the city council’s website calling for the gymnasium to be kept in a functional state, which was supported by over a thousand residents. Two days later, Vitalii Kim, Head of the Mykolaiv Regional State Administration, stated that the regional authorities were ready to cooperate with the city authorities on the restoration of Gymnasium №2.

In May 2021, Oleksandr Pozdniakov, head of the capital construction department at Mykolaiv City Council, reported that two companies had responded to a commercial tender to assess the gymnasium’s structural safety. It turned out that only part of the roof was in a state of disrepair, and there was no threat to teaching activities. The library and museum were then ‘relocated’ from that wing of the school.

Later, the mayor of Mykolaiv, Oleksandr Sienkevych, announced that minor repairs were planned for Gymnasium №2 by the end of 2021, whilst major works would be postponed for the time being.

Since the start of the full-scale war, the school has endured four enemy shelling incidents. The first occurred in April 2022. The building was damaged by the use of cluster munitions.

Consequently, the restoration of the school was included among the four sites in the Mykolaiv region for which the government has allocated 1.2 billion hryvnias for reconstruction in 2024. Of this sum, 149.5 million hryvnias from the state budget has been allocated for the reconstruction of Gymnasium №2.

In July 2023, the Department of Urban Planning and Architecture of the Mykolaiv Regional State Administration commissioned a design, and subsequently launched a tender for the restoration of the building, which was won by the company «Zhytloproombud-8» with a bid of 145.5 million hryvnias. The contractor was due to complete the work by 31 December 2024, including the fitting out of a shelter and the restoration of the building following shelling. However, the contractor failed to complete the work on time, and it was postponed until 2025.