Czech state will electronically auction the Broadway Palace in Prague for one billion CZK

Today at 9:00 the electronic auction of the Broadway Palace in Prague 1, organized by the state, begins. The starting price is CZK 1.05 billion. This follows from the information of the Office for Representation of the State in Property Matters (ÚZSVM). According to him, this is a sale with the highest minimum price during the existence of the office. The deposit is CZK 20 million, the minimum price increase is CZK 200,000. The auction will end at noon on Thursday. The house from the 1930s is one of the largest functionalist buildings in the historical center of Prague.

"This is a unique investment opportunity. We have noticed interest from foreign investors since the first day of publishing this offer. I believe that an electronic auction will make it possible to find a new owner who will find meaningful use for this exceptional complex," said ÚZSVM CEO Kateřina Arajmu.

ÚZSVM took over the Broadway Palace complex in 2016 from the then State Railway and Transport Administration (now the Railway Administration). According to the law, the office first offered the palace to other state institutions, but according to the ÚZSVM, none of them showed interest in it. Therefore, according to the ÚZSVM report, the office is now looking for a new owner of the palace through a transparent tender with an electronic auction.

"This sale is completely unique even in terms of the declared amount. It is a sale with the highest minimum price in the entire history of ÚZSVM," Arajmu said earlier. According to the office, the state received the highest amount so far, namely 790 million crowns, from the sale of the complex on Republic Square in Prague. Another of the highest amounts was brought by the auction of the Prague complex U půjčovny, which was sold for CZK 355.1 million after 100 bids.

Broadway Palace is located between Na Příkopě and Celetná streets. It consists of three interconnected tracts, in which, in addition to the theater, there are also shops, restaurants and offices. According to documents on the ÚZSVM website, the complex has a total of 5,375 square meters of office space and over 3,000 sqm of retail space, including the space used by the theater. The complex was built between 1936 and 1938 as the Sevastopol Palace, whose authors were the architects Bohumír Kozák and Antonín Černý. The building first served the needs of Italian savings banks and there were apartments in part of the complex. A cinema was established in the basement in 1938, and its premises are now used by the Broadway musical Theater. After 1980, the building was adapted for administrative purposes.

ÚZSVM was established in 2002 and, in addition to the administration of state property, the Czechia represents the place of other state organizational units in legal disputes concerning state property. The main source of income of the office consists of sales and leases of land, buildings and structures, as well as funds that fell to the state from the so-called deaths of the dead without heirs. Last year, the Office's revenues fell by six percent year on year to CZK 1.39 billion. The most successful year for ÚZSVM was 2015, when it received CZK 1.93 billion in sales. In February 2018, the Office launched an electronic auction system, in which it held 11,742 electronic auctions in mid-March this year, from which the state received CZK 960 million.

Source: CTK