The headquarters of Rudé právo will be the largest office building in Prague

Photo: florentinum.cz

Prague - The Czech-Slovak investment group Penta is starting the construction of the largest office building in the capital city at Florenc. The project, costing 200 million euros, or approximately 5.1 billion crowns, is expected to be completed by the end of 2013. Penta presented the project at a press conference today. The building will rise on the site of the former complex of the Czech Typography, later known as Rudé právo.
Penta is currently completing demolition work in the area and plans to begin construction proper this spring. "The project for the office building was approved by the National Heritage Institute without significant comments; we only urged the investor to reduce the building's height to maintain the height level of the surrounding buildings," said Zdeňka Kalová, spokesperson for the National Heritage Institute, today to ČTK. The project is now to be assessed by the heritage department of the Prague City Hall, which issues binding opinions.
The project, titled Florentinum, will offer a total of 49,000 square meters of gross floor area for offices over nine floors. This is approximately the same amount of space available for rent in the City Tower, a high-rise building in Prague's Pankrác area. Another 7,500 square meters will be occupied by stores and restaurants at Florenc. "We do not want a shopping center as part of the project," said Petr Palička, head of Penta's development division.
The new building has received a preliminary international LEED Gold certification for its planned energy-saving technologies and the quality of materials used.
Penta has already signed contracts with future tenants for several thousand square meters in the planned administrative center. However, the project is so assured of its potential that it is also committed to speculative construction. In such a case, the project would be financed from its own resources; however, according to Palička, the group is currently negotiating financing with several banks. "It will undoubtedly be a banking consortium," he noted.
The vacancy rate for Prague offices slightly increased to 12 percent at the end of 2011, the Prague Research Forum, an association of real estate consulting firms, recently announced. There were 336,000 square meters of administrative space without a tenant. In total, there were 2.8 million square meters of office space in the capital city last quarter.
The properties between Na Florenci and Na Poříčí streets were originally owned by the Austrian company S+B CEE Beteiligungsverwaltungs, which had planned to build a multipurpose center there. However, the plan was not realized, and in January 2010, the properties were sold to Penta. This construction is Penta's first development project in the Czech Republic. In Slovakia, Penta owns 11 real estate projects.
Penta is also trying to expand onto land near the former Czech Typography that belongs to Czech Railways. It is offering 20,000 crowns per square meter for these plots. According to the company's earlier statement, the offered price is identical to the prices of the neighboring plots of Czech Typography, which it purchased two years ago. The extent of the land that the investment group is interested in will be determined in the future by a change in the zoning plan. Penta is also the majority owner of Masaryk Station Investments, which plans commercial development around the station.
Penta is a Central European investment group founded in 1994. It primarily invests in retail, healthcare, aviation manufacturing, engineering, energy, entertainment, and banking. It operates in several countries in Europe, with the most investment projects realized in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Poland.