Vilnius mayor calls for international competition to repurpose Sports Palace

Vilnius Mayor Valdas Benkunskas says an international ideas competition should be held to determine a new use for the former Vilnius Concert and Sports Palace, LRT reports.

He said the Vilnius municipality is developing a separate conference centre project on a plot near the Seimas, Lithuania’s parliament.

Benkunskas was responding to a call by Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun, the United States special envoy for monitoring and combating antisemitism, for Lithuania to abandon plans to establish a conference centre or another commercial or cultural institution in the former palace.

“The city has answered its own questions regarding the conference centre. We are developing the actual conference centre project on a plot near the Seimas,” Benkunskas told ELTA.

The mayor said the process launched by a working group formed during Ingrida Šimonytė’s government should continue as the future of the building is considered.

He said the next step should be an international competition to identify the most suitable model for using the building and determine how it should operate. The aim, he said, should be to satisfy all sides and ensure that its new function creates added value for the state and the city, given the expected scale of the reconstruction investment.

Benkunskas added that the US position on the Sports Palace and the territory of the old Jewish cemetery in the Šnipiškės district was not new and had previously been known to the city.

In a letter to Culture Minister Lukas Alsys in August, Kaploun urged Lithuania to abandon plans for a conference centre in the former palace. He also called on the minister to oppose a resolution registered in the Seimas concerning the building’s use and to reject plans for a conference centre or another commercial or cultural institution on the territory of the old Jewish cemetery in Šnipiškės.

The government led by Gintautas Paluckas had decided to adapt the Sports Palace for use as a conference centre. However, after the 19th Cabinet resigned, the building’s future became uncertain again.

Built on the old Jewish cemetery in Šnipiškės in 1971, the building has stood unused for a long time. Since 2015, authorities have considered converting it into a congress centre, a plan that has drawn mixed reactions from the Jewish community.

The Sports Palace hosted the founding congress of Lithuania’s Sąjūdis movement in October 1988. In January 1991, a farewell ceremony for the victims of the January 13 events was held there.