Member of the House of Representatives Abdel-Moneim Emam, the head of the Justice Party, submitted a briefing request on Monday to the Prime Minister, Environment Minister, Youth and Sports Minister, and Cairo Governor, regarding the encroachment on the environment, urban and historical order.
Emam demanded that any development project in the archaeological al-Zohriya Garden and the Zamalek Tower Fouda be halted.
He added that a committee be formed to restore the archaeological garden lawfully, in order to preserve and restore heritage gardens, including adherence to the guide of the National Authority for Urban Coordination regarding the development of heritage gardens.
The briefing request submitted by the head of Justice Party included important observations about Zohriya Garden, explaining that it is registered under the number “0318000133”, and must be restored based on the guide for gardens with a distinctive architectural character approved by the Supreme Council for Planning and Urban Development upon decision 44/09/21/8.
The garden’s greenhouses are more than 150 years old, founded in 1868 and are treated as an antiquity, according to Antiquities Protection Law #117 of 1983.
The Fouda Tower, known informally as the “Abandoned Zamalek Tower”, Emam said that it was built in the 1970s and was designed to be a hotel with a height exceeding 50 floors, but has remained in its current destitute condition since completion.
The reason for the building not being operational is due to the lack of a private garage, although the license it obtained when it was built in 1972 did not stipulate the requirement for one.
Controversy has spread following news circulated about proposals to build a garage for the building on the land of Gezira Club and the adjacent fish garden, with concerns raised about the deduction of an area from the historic garden in the Zamalek district and a green area from the Gezira Club.
In 2014, then Minister for Antiquities Mohamed Ibrahim denied approval of a project to build a garage parallel to the wall of the Fish Garden in Zamalek, due to the danger it poses to the garden.
“The problem cannot be solved at the expense of Gezira Club and its members, especially with what the club was exposed to during previous periods of rule, in terms of encroachment on its lands for the benefit of other projects,” he said at the time.
