Developer CPI will start demolitions at the Zbrojovka site

Brno - The developer CPI will begin demolishing the first buildings in the area of the former Zbrojovka Brno in the coming months. Many of them are already in a state of disrepair. In the future, offices, apartments, shops, services, and small-scale manufacturing will be developed in the more than twenty-hectare area, said CPI spokesperson Jan Burian to ČTK.

For now, the company is continuously clearing the land and preparing it for future construction. Several structurally unsound buildings will be removed in the summer. At the same time, negotiations are ongoing with potential tenants for various properties for which individual studies are being prepared based on their requirements, Burian stated.

The site is one of the largest brownfields in Brno. It covers more than 20 hectares and has over a hundred buildings of various ages. Construction will be gradual. One of the first will likely be the renovation of the currently five-story high-rise building near the Židenice train station, which dates back to 1973 and will have nine floors of offices.

The developer previously stated that work on the site will not be completed until at least 2027. There will be 800 apartments situated along the banks of the Svitava River, 30,000 square meters of office space, 40,000 square meters of industrial buildings, and 3,600 square meters designated for retail.

The CPI Property Group has experience with similar projects in other countries in Europe. The Brno project is based on the experience of revitalizing an industrial park in Berlin, which was successfully transformed into a modern complex. The group focuses on investments and real estate rentals in Central and Eastern Europe as well as in Germany. It is headquartered in Luxembourg and manages assets worth five billion euros (approximately 131 billion CZK).

The developer benefits from the fact that none of the buildings are protected as historical monuments. Nonetheless, according to Michaela Ryšková from the National Heritage Institute, it is an important collection of buildings with urbanistic, architectural, typological, and cultural-historical values, built in the spirit of interwar modernism. "From a typological perspective, it is the only area in the territory of the republic from the indicated period, built for the serial production of weapons and furthermore preserved to the present day, including underground shooting tunnels," said Ryšková.

According to her, Zbrojovka is also a bearer of a certain negative memory of Brno's wartime history, as it is often referred to as the starting point for the violent expulsion of Brno's Germans. The area is also connected to another significant phase in Brno's development, namely wool production. The oldest part of the site consists of buildings of a wool goods factory. "The remnants of its chimney, serving Zbrojovka as a lookout, complete one of the characteristic images of Zbrojovka as seen from across the river," added Ryšková.