Armenian Mayor Seeks to Solidify Ties

Although he is more than 10,000 miles away from his home in rural Armenia, Suren Avetisyan, mayor of Spitak, said he feels like he never left.

And that is the way it is supposed to be, considering that Thousand Oaks is Spitak’s sister city.

“It has all been very good,” Avetisyan said through a translator as he visited the city’s Civic Arts Plaza on Thursday. “You have very big freeways.”

He and four other residents of Spitak, including two schoolgirls, have been touring the city and surrounding areas for the past few days at the invitation of Thousand Oaks.

Although the delegation’s 10-day visit is mostly a gesture to solidify the bonds of friendship between the two cities, the mayor said that when he looks at Thousand Oaks, he sees a plan for his own city.

Spitak, which has about 22,000 residents, is near the Turkish border in the eastern part of Armenia, a former republic of the Soviet Union.

Like the rest of the country, Spitak has been reeling since an earthquake devastated Armenia in 1988 and its subsequent transition to independence since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. More than 4,000 Spitak residents died in the quake and since independence, homelessness has hovered at about 70%, officials said.

“It is a great accomplishment to have freedom,” Avetisyan said. “But there have been many problems and the people are still in the transition stages.”

However, the mayor said he has made progress since coming to office a year ago. Spitak now has street lights and the broad boulevards are slowly being repaved. The center of the city has a new park and last Christmas, residents erected and decorated the first municipal tree.

The sister city program has helped finance a $30,000 renovation of a five-story apartment building in Spitak that now houses 25 families.

“It’s very different from what it was a few years ago,” said Thousand Oaks resident Vasken Melkonian, an Armenian native who is a member of the sister city committee. “Things are starting to change, but it’s very slow.”

In addition to his visit to Thousand Oaks, Avetisyan will travel to Los Angeles to meet with businesses about possible investment in Spitak’s struggling manufacturing and agricultural industries.

“To really rebuild my city, we have to support industry,” he said. “I came here to do that, and the first step is to build friendship between our two cities.”