Brno must select a project for Tugendhat again, the renovation will be delayed

Brno - The repair of the Tugendhat villa is likely to be delayed again. The Brno City Hall must once again select architects who will prepare project documentation for the reconstruction of the monument listed on the UNESCO World Heritage list. The original selection in the tender was against the law, said the head of the Office for the Protection of Competition (ÚOHS) Martin Pecina to journalists today. The verdict is not yet final. The city will consider an appeal.
    According to Pecina, it is now up to the city whether to choose a winner again from the companies that applied for the original tender as ordered by the ÚOHS, or to cancel the original flawed competition entirely and announce a new one. "They reserved the right to cancel the entire tender in the conditions, and it would probably be better in this situation," Pecina stated. He added that the ÚOHS complied with the court's opinion, as the city tender was originally approved by the court.
    Today, Mayor Roman Onderka complained about this. He stated that he would convene a coalition meeting regarding the new ÚOHS decision and have an analysis prepared by lawyers. He also criticized that when the ÚOHS approved the tender twice in the past and now issued an opposite opinion after the court's decision, it still wants a thousand crown fee from the city for it. "I don't like this matter at all and I instructed the legal department of the city hall to find out who we can claim this amount from," Onderka said. He added that it would most likely be from the Czech Republic.
    According to the courts, the winning consortium led by the company Omnia did not meet the competition requirements. The city hall should have excluded it from the selection process. The contract would then probably have been awarded to architect Jan Sapák and his colleagues, who finished second in the tender.
    Sapák told journalists today that in the current situation, it is not important how long the repairs will take to start, but how high the quality of the project will be. He had previously repeatedly described Omnia's plan as too drastic and also overpriced. Today, the court ruled that he does not have to apologize for his statements, as Omnia had requested.
    However, Omnia has already completed its project and has been paid for it. It cost the city treasury over eight million crowns. Thus, according to the mayor, the city lawyers will also investigate whether the city incurred more than eight million crowns in damages and from whom it can potentially claim it.
    The villa, which is on the UNESCO World Heritage list and has belonged to the city of Brno since 1994, has been waiting for a major repair for several years. The reconstruction is to involve almost everything, including structurally compromised foundations. The project cost the city nine million crowns. But what is important is the price that individual project teams calculated for the reconstruction. Omnia talked about 200 million crowns. Architects Ludvík Grym, Jan Sapák, and Jindřich Škrabal, however, claim that repairs could be arranged more cheaply.