Praha 8 approved the municipal tower project with a shopping center for 1.1 billion.

Josef Pleskot, town hall in Benešov, 1995

Prague - The Council of Prague 8 today approved the contract for the construction of a new town hall connected to a shopping center at Palmovka. The project worth more than 1.1 billion crowns excluding VAT was decided by the representatives less than a month before the elections. The construction will be financed by revenues from privatization, which amount to almost three billion crowns in Prague 8, and will be built by Metrostav Development, a.s. Twenty-three councilors voted for the proposal, 18 were against, and no one abstained. According to the opposition, the project is controversial, referring to it as "a municipal hypermarket."
    The mayor of Prague 8, Josef Nosek (ODS), believes that the municipal district will effectively utilize the money from the privatization of apartments through the construction of the town hall and shopping center at Palmovka. According to him, the town hall will cost 496 million crowns, and the adjacent shopping center will cost 635 million excluding VAT. "One can imagine today’s town hall very well as part of a multifunctional urban center with a large hall with shops, a courtyard, a restaurant, a café, cultural and social facilities," states the material regarding the project prepared by Metrostav and available to ČTK.
    Although the SZ and ČSSD agree that Prague 8 needs a town hall because its various departments are housed in several buildings, they believe that the municipal district should halt the project and wait for the municipal elections. According to TOP 09, the return on investment for the project is questionable; the party also disagrees with the fact that no tender and project documentation has been presented to the public yet. They claim that no professional or public discussions preceded the investment.
    The project, or rather its "volume study," was presented today to the councilors by the renowned architect Josef Pleskot. "We are not in any severe conflict with the urban plan," he said regarding the proposal.
    "It is a bit of a problem that the architect opened the discussion here, but not several months or years before the vote, but several dozen minutes. There may have been discussions within the ODS," said councilor Petr Vilgus (SZ). Not all members of the Civic Democratic Party were in favor either. "The process is at the beginning. There should be further discussions about it. That is why I will not support this proposal. This is the first time someone has invited me to a discussion here," said councilor Tomáš Chvála from ODS, which has all six councilors in Prague 8 and a comfortable majority in the 45-member council.
    There are 27 councilors from the Civic Democratic Party, four from the Greens, five from the Communists, and eight from the Social Democrats. One councilor represents the Independent Club for Prague.