Revival of the Kärdla Yacht Harbour

What if I tell you a story about a town on a seashore without a harbour? No way - you say! But this is true, it used to be Kärdla on the Hiiumaa Island. The harbour, once a gateway to Europe, emerged fora huge clothing factory and was lost in the World War II.

Kärdla Old Harbour

The Cloth Factory (built in 1830, destroyed in 1941) gave a start for the development of the community from a village to a town. Kärdla owes the factory a network of streets and infrasturcture; a school, a hospital and care for the elderly were established; a new church, houses for workers. Many other vital infrastructure elements were built up, including a harbour to satisfy needs of the factory.

In the revolutionary 1990s, Kärdla made an effort to restore the harbour within the PHARE Program. Years went by, Mayor after Mayor found more important fields of town requiring fast developments, but the harbor area stayed abandoned.

In 2009, Hiiumaa joined the Interreg IV project New Bridges, led by the UBC Commission on Environment. The aim of the project is to study the rural-urban interaction and find practical solutions to the problems of partner-towns. The method of the project, elaborated by NORDREGIO (project partner) foresaw active involvment of citizens: representatives of business, public and voluntary sector selected the area of project activities. These discussions were backed by the sociological study on the Hiiumaa people's dispositions on the development trends and current status of the island. The problem to solve for Kärdla turned out to be the new function for the area surrounding the harbour. In cooperation with the County Government, the detail plan is elaborated allocating living, leasure, business and social zones of the future business centre of the town. At the same time, EU funds for building the yacht harbour were obtained. The harbour will be able to host more than a hundred yachts and boats while the immediate surroundig of the harbour will become a service and culture centre for the whole town. First vessels in the brand new destination - Kärdla Yacht Harbour are to be welcomed in the season of 2013.