Penta Real Estate has completed work on two buildings near Prague’s Masaryk railway station. The last part of the golden facade for 500 million crowns was ceremoniously unveiled by representatives of the company headed by Penta co-owner Marko Dospiva. Penta also bought ČSAD Praha Holding, which owns the Florenc bus station and adjacent land.
The total investment reached 2.5 billion crowns. The company will invest additional money in the planned roofing of the track, which, according to representatives of Penta, could start construction at the end of March next year. The Railway Administration is now looking for a contractor in a competition. Dospiva said that they had been preparing the golden facade for 2.5 years and it cost 500 million crowns. “It’s an extraordinary thing, the completion of an iconic element of this house by the Zaha Hadid studio,” he said outside the building.
According to Penta Real Estate spokesperson Martin Lánský, the nine-story buildings are 95 percent occupied. The total area is 28 thousand square meters. In addition to the offices, which occupy three quarters of the area, there are restaurants, cafes and services. According to Penta Real Estate development director Rudolf Vack, the facade was designed from 2019, and it was made by Sipral. “There are over 3,000 facade modules. When we moved into the final phase at the beginning of 2021, we knew that we would not be able to make do with normal design and construction activity. We had to turn to the automotive segment,” Vacek said, adding that the facade of the buildings required precision down to tenths of a millimeter. On the roof of the buildings, the company is preparing a terrace for the public, which will be accessible by a separate elevator.
Construction work on the roofing of the Masaryk railway station should begin at the end of the first quarter of next year, and construction should take over two years. “Then we are also waiting to see what will happen next towards Florence. The original designs by Zaha Hadid also included spaces leading further to the bus station. There we are waiting for a change in the zoning plan,” said Lánský.
Through Penta Real Estate, the Penta Group bought ČSAD Praha Holding, which owns the Florenc bus station and adjacent land. The merger of companies is now being assessed by the Office for the Protection of Economic Competition (ÚOHS). The antimonopoly office assesses the transaction in a so-called simplified procedure. The companies did not disclose the price of the transaction. In the past, the Penta group wanted to buy the lands of ČSAD Praha Holding, which are adjacent to the railway station. However, ČSAD announced in 2016 that it would build its own project on them. Last year, Penta, ČSAD Prague holding, with the support of the Institute of Planning and Development of Prague, launched a new urban planning competition for part of the land near the Florenc bus station. Penta is investing a total of ten billion crowns in projects around the railway station.
Source: ČTK
Tags: Penta completed work Masaryk station bought Florenc station
