A building full of squatters will become the headquarters of a space agency. Work has started

After years, work started again at the beginning of the week Center Palmovka, which stands in the Libna part of Prague. The building, which was to serve as Prague 8’s town hall, offices and shops, and which was designed by a renowned architect Josef Pleskothas been deteriorating for over eight years.

The construction, which began with the large-scale removal of encroached trees, is being carried out for the municipality by the company Porr, which won the contract in a tender with a price of 2.62 billion crowns and, in addition to construction work, will also deliver architectural designs.

It should be finished in two years, because the building is more than neglected – in addition to broken windows and a spray-painted facade, its condition is also affected by frequent squatting at night, which even a few night watchmen cannot prevent due to the enormous scale of the building.

“The road around the place in the evening in winter is very unpleasant, several times it happened to me that someone made indecent suggestions at me at the fence that separates the building,” describes Anna from Prague, who did not wish to give her full name.

The Palmovka center was intended to serve primarily the needs of the town district. She founded the company Centrum Palmovka for its construction. But shortly after the start of construction, the investor had an argument with the contractor, Metrostav Alfa. The courts dragged on until 2021, and finally the City Hall of the City of Prague intervened, acquiring the building and looking for a new use for it.

“The original project could not be handled by the city district and it collapsed during construction. We therefore took over the building and started looking for an adequate use for it with my colleague Pavle Vyhnánek. We reached an agreement with the state and the space agency, which needed new, larger premises for its headquarters,” said Petr Hlaváček, deputy for territorial and strategic development (STAN), on his profile on the X social network.

EUSPAor the EU Space Program Agency, is now based in Prague’s Holešovice and has been looking for new premises for more than two years.

“With the new headquarters of the building, Prague will become a prestigious international scientific center for European space programs with considerable economic importance for the Czech economy. The total future contribution to the GDP of the Czech Republic until 2027 is estimated at nine billion crowns, with an annual contribution of 600 million crowns,” said the Minister of Finance at a press conference last year Zbyněk Stanjura (ODS) about the new EUSPA headquarters, to which it could move in 2026.

During its time in Prague, the agency took care of several successful projects. One of the most prominent is the Galileo navigation system – the European alternative to the American GPS system. Among other things, it monitors the current state of urban public transport from space.

Precisely because of the complex projects, EUSPA has several specific requirements for the building, which the building with the code name “Nová Palmovka” fulfills. However, the most important thing is the capacity. The existing building in Jankovského Street has space for 350 employees, which they would like to almost double by 2026.