Liberec Forum Center will offer shops, entertainment, and housing

Liberec - A new shopping center offering stores, entertainment, and housing is set to be built in the so-called lower center of Liberec, close to the public transport terminal and on the site of the current Tesco department store. The project, costing approximately 1.5 billion crowns, is financed by the multinational company MULTI Development. The European director of the company, Ronald Dasbach, informed journalists about this today.
    The construction of the center, which consists of dozens of buildings, is divided into two phases. The reason is a request from Tesco, which does not want to interrupt operations in Liberec. "Sometime in the fall of next year, we should end sales in the existing department store and welcome customers to the new premises the very next day," said Bohumil Ženatý, the director of the Liberec department store, to ČTK. According to him, Tesco joined the project primarily because the current building no longer meets modern requirements for a hypermarket.
    Liberec's Tesco serves around 100,000 customers a week. The building, opened in the late 1970s, was constructed as a combined department store consisting of three connected buildings. This, according to Ženatý, complicates customer movement today, as well as making the receipt and handling of goods difficult. The building is also not barrier-free, and movement within it is problematic for mothers with strollers. All of this should be resolved by the new building.
    According to architect Radim Kousal from the engineering architects' studio Siadesign, the goal of the entire project is to restore the urban character to the lower center. "In the last 40 years, many buildings and several streets have disappeared from this part of the city; the Forum project should bring life back to the area and create a vibrant center," Kousal said. Part of the complex will include the already existing parking garage and also the only preserved building from the original construction.
    The new center will offer 45,000 square meters of space, of which 10,000 square meters is designated for the new Tesco hypermarket. Another 23,000 square meters will be shared by around 120 stores. According to technical director Petr Černák, about 60 percent of the space is already contractually secured. The complex will also include around 1,500 square meters of apartments, office spaces, and numerous restaurants, cafes, and also amenities such as a fitness center or bowling. The investor is also in talks with two multiplex operators.
    The first phase of the center will be completed in the fall of 2008, and the second in the spring of 2010. However, the demolition of the old Tesco department store, authored by architects Miroslav Masák and Karel Hubáček, will precede the construction of the second phase. The project could be threatened by the designation of the department store as a cultural monument. There are already two requests at the Ministry of Culture asking for the building to be declared a monument, similar to another similar work by Masák - the Prague department store Máj. However, the investors do not consider preserving the building in their project. According to them, the building does not possess qualities sufficient for it to be declared a monument. They claim there are many far more valuable buildings in Liberec.
    The Liberec Forum center is not the only similar project in the city of 100,000 inhabitants. A commercial and social center called Promenada should be built next year on the site of the former Textilana. The project, costing around 1.5 billion crowns, was recently presented by the Dutch company ECC International. The Israeli company Plaza Centers has begun constructing a large commercial and entertainment center in the city center near the Liberec town hall for about 900 million crowns, and the largest shopping center in the region, Nisa, is also expanding, with an investment of 1.25 billion crowns from ING Real Estate.