The city of Brno may want to build a new football stadium in the Lužánky area but it’s being blocked by a classic problem faced by countless developers: it doesn’t control all the needed land. In this case, it’s because the businessman Libor Prochazka owns real estate on the site. The two sides have failed to come to any agreement on the sale or use of the land or even on a method about how to reach an agreement. Prochazka doesn’t want money for the land (its value is estimated at CZK 250m), preferring to trade it for another piece of real estate. But nothing suitable to both him and to local politicians has been found, as of yet. While the idea of going to arbitration has been shot down before, the mayor of Brno Petr Vokřál recently told journalists that the city is now prepared to go forward with it. Prochazka appears to have the upper hand in the situation, as he’s already won a court case forcing the city to pay him millions of crowns for the use of his land and could sue in future to force payment of as much as CZK 15m per year. This means that even if the city were to find another location for the new stadium, it will still have an expensive problem to deal with.
