In Hradec Králové, a parking garage for 284 cars will open in June

author: architects Chmelík & partners, s.r.o.

Hradec Králové – In the center of Hradec Králové, a parking house for 284 cars will serve motorists starting in June. The garages are intended to help address the problem of insufficient parking spaces in the historic center of the hundred-thousand-strong city. The investor for the construction, costing approximately 135 million crowns, is the private company ISP Hradec Králové, which operates a parking system in Hradec Králové. Jiří Holubec, a member of the board of ISP Hradec Králové, said this today to ČTK.

Construction of the garages in the Gayer Barracks area started last spring and is now nearing completion. "The construction is going according to plan. We only have finishing touches and occupancy permit processes left," Holubec said. The parking house is four stories high. It consists of a reinforced concrete skeleton, with a façade made of vertical wooden slats. The flat roof is covered with a layer of gravel crush. The entrance and exit of the garages will be via a roundabout on Šimková Street.

The construction of the parking garages was complicated at the beginning by an archaeological find of remains from an 18th-century fortress. As a result, the investor had to revise the project documentation by three-quarters and remove the inset semi-floor of the parking house from the build. Consequently, the originally planned capacity of the garages was reduced by 40 spaces.

ISP Hradec Králové is owned by the construction company BAK and has been operating the parking system in Hradec Králové since January 2007 based on a thirty-year concession contract awarded by the Hradec Králové municipality. With the money collected from parking, ISP is obliged to build at least 1,000 parking spaces in Hradec. Half of this commitment was fulfilled in 2009 when they opened the Katschnerka garages with 500 spaces at a cost of 121 million crowns.

The city determines parking fees, contributing no funds to the parking system and the construction of parking houses. The city will also set the parking fee in the new parking house. In total, the company collects fees in the so-called ISP zone, which covers the city center and its immediate surroundings, from approximately 7,200 parking spaces. In 2017, ISP Hradec Králové reported revenues of 47 million crowns and a profit of 16.3 million crowns. The hourly parking rate in Hradec ranges from ten to 30 crowns depending on the location.

The municipality itself wants to address parking primarily around the university hospital, which lies outside the ISP zone. The current parking capacity around the hospital is completely insufficient, and thus the municipality is planning to construct a temporary parking lot near the hospital.