In Ostrava's Výškovice, a new shopping center will be built

Ostrava - In the middle of the Ostrava housing estate Výškovice, a shopping center will be built on the site of the recently demolished Odra Shopping Center. Its construction is expected to cost around 250 million crowns and it should open in 2018. The spokeswoman for the most populous district of Ostrava-Jih, Martina Gavendová, informed ČTK today.

"I am pleased that this location will come to life again and provide citizens with the services and establishments they need, such as a pharmacy, grocery store, hairdresser, florist, or restaurant," said the mayor of Ostrava-Jih, Martin Bednář (ANO).

The Odra center had been deteriorating for years and its reconstruction was hindered by property disputes. Last year, workers demolished it. "In these days, the decision on the building permit has finally taken legal effect," said Martin Výtisk, director of the property management company 3E Projekt, which is the investor of the construction.

The original project for the construction of the new center has changed in recent years. It was originally supposed to cost nearly half a billion crowns. In the end, it has dropped to half that amount. "The economy in Ostrava has changed, we reassessed the original large project, at the moment we would not find so many interesting tenants," Výtisk explained the change.

According to him, the construction will not be simple. "We will be building in a housing estate, where there is, among other things, a transformer station and also a heat transfer station - we will have negotiations on how and when we will be able to relocate these distribution channels," Výtisk stated.

Ostrava-Jih has around 100,000 inhabitants. The district mainly consists of large housing estates - Hrabůvka, Dubina, Výškovice, and Zábřeh.