ÚOHS turned to the NSS regarding the Tender for the Tugendhat Villa

Brno - The tender for the project documentation for the renovation of the Tugendhat villa in Brno will be addressed by the Supreme Administrative Court (NSS). The Office for the Protection of Competition (ÚOHS), which repeatedly approved the selection process, today filed a cassation complaint against the decision of the Brno regional court. This was stated to journalists by ÚOHS chairman Martin Pecina. According to the regional court, the tender was in violation of the law and the antitrust authority needs to review it again.
    The renovation of the UNESCO heritage site in Brno has been postponed several times, and according to the latest information, it will not begin before the summer of 2007. However, it will be necessary to ensure the building's structural integrity over the winter. The reconstruction, costing nearly 200 million, has been delayed, among other things, by disputes regarding the winner of the project tender. Unsuccessful applicants complained about the selection process, but the ÚOHS repeatedly did not grant their requests.
    Only recently did the Brno regional court rule that the city hall made a mistake when it did not disqualify the winning consortium led by the company Omnia during the evaluation of bids. Thus, the case will now be reviewed separately by the antitrust authority and separately by the NSS. The court is deciding on the verdict of a lower instance; it will either confirm the opinion of the regional senate or overturn it. In that case, the regional judges would have to issue a new ruling.
    Regardless of this, the ÚOHS will again address the tender. "We cannot cancel the competition anymore, a substantial part of the contract has already been fulfilled," Pecina explained. It is also unlikely that the municipality will be fined because it signed the contract based on the original verdict, thus in good faith that it was acting correctly. "We will probably conclude that the law was violated," Pecina added.
    According to architect Jan Sapák, who was unsuccessful in the documentation tender, the NSS cannot decide differently than the regional court. Unsuccessful applicants will once again be able to appeal the new verdict of the ÚOHS, first to Pecina and then back to the regional court.
    The city, which has owned the villa since 1994, canceled the original tender for the construction contractor before the elections. Brno city councilors have not yet been able to agree on how much to allocate for the renovation of the functionalist house. The council, still led by the ODS, recommended that the city council increase the costs from 112 to 170 million crowns. However, the opposition, which is the majority of the current coalition, found the new price too high.
    Almost everything will be renovated in the villa, including the structurally damaged foundations. The Tugendhat villa in Brno's Černá Pole was designed in 1928 by the world-renowned German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. The project aims to restore the house to its original historical form.