The management of Czech Railways (ČD) is considering building its own headquarters, where the company would move from its lease in the Transport Ministry building. In the coming months, the carrier will submit a proposal to the ministry to put its unused land in Prague into a joint project with a developer. The latter would build headquarters for the railways on the land as well as one or two other buildings, which it would sell. The railways would thus get a new headquarters cheaper, possibly without investing their own money. The web site E15.cz reported about the transaction yesterday with reference to the director of ČD Michal Krapince.
According to the server, the railways have selected two main locations in Prague where the new headquarters could be built. The first is next to the bus station in Florence on Prvni pluku Street, the second in Holešovice between the train station and the river on Pod Dráhou Street. Both plots are worth hundreds of millions of crowns.
The railways would put the land into a joint project with a developer that would emerge from a public tender. “The developer would build our headquarters building and one or two other commercial or residential buildings, for example with apartments or offices. The developer would build and finance three buildings – two would be sold and a profit would be made,” Krapinec said. After deducting the cost of building the headquarters and a reasonable profit for the developer, one side of the transaction would pay the other the rest. Given the significant value of the land, Krapinec said, there is also the possibility that the carrier would not have to invest any money in the project.
The railways are currently working on a proposal, which they will submit to the Ministry of Transport in the coming months. “We have been informed through the supervisory board that the company’s board of directors is considering various options to address the issue of its possible new headquarters,” Transport Ministry spokesman František Jemelka told E15.
It is not yet clear whether only the passenger carrier or the entire ČD group, including its subsidiaries, would move to the new headquarters. Krapinec considers the latter option to be ideal. The optimistic scenario, according to him, envisages the move in five years, E15 reports. The entire ČD group employs almost 22,000 people.
The carrier has tried unsuccessfully to move out of the Transport Ministry building on the Ludvík Svoboda embankment, where ČD pays tens of millions of crowns in rent. But no one applied for the tender for a 15-year lease of nearly 10,000 sqm of office space.
Source: E15 and CTK
