The Prague City Hall will begin to deal with an amendment to the zoning plan which, if approved, will allow the roofing of the main station track and construction above it. City councillors agreed to the change yesterday. The application for the change was submitted by the company CR-City, which includes Czech Railways and Penta, among others. Residents protested against the plan at the meeting, and some city councillors and Senator Marek Hilšer also disagreed with the change.
The owners of the land plan to roof the platform and build residential or administrative buildings at the station. One of the options, according to an earlier statement by Penta spokesman Martin Lánský, is the construction of a new building for the National Library or another public building. The exact form of the project is not yet clear, while the scope of the development is to be specified during the process of amending the zoning plan, according to representatives of the municipality.
Opposition councillors in particular opposed the change. Adam Scheinherr, the chairman of the Prague City Council, demanded that a working group be created first, which would include representatives of the city, the districts, the developer and the professional public, among others. The group would assess the roofing and construction plan. Opposition councillor Milan Urban (SPD) said he supports the development of the city, but everything must have rules. He said the surrounding towns also do not have dormitories built on. “We could dam up the Vltava River, it has to have some scale. And this is wrong, we’re giving someone a blank check,” he said.
Senator Hilscher said the way the amendment was filed is odd. “You have to question whether the motion, and the whole context of its filing, is in the public interest. We have seen relatively quick hearings, processes that usually take many months, here it was done in a month and a few days. I dare say that this is not how you look for the public interest,” he said. How the area will be used, he said, must be properly and independently assessed. He reproached Prague for not having a concept of what to do with the area.
Deputy mayor Alexandra Udženija (ODS) said that Prague 2’s town hall had approved the application to change the zoning plan and had sent it to the municipality for the authority to determine whether construction was even possible. “Don’t scare people that Penta is going to do something here, it will be under the Institute of Planning and Development (IPR) and the city, and we as the Prague 2 district will play an important role in this because it concerns us very much,” she said.
Petr Zeman (Praha Sobě), an opposition councillor and chairman of the committee for territorial development, also supported the approval of the motion. The site is a so-called heat island, he said, and a development with a park and greenery would help the city’s climate. “I am in favour of starting to think about it and start working on it,” he said.
Source: CTK
Photo: Deputy mayor Alexandra Udženija
