The cultural house in Holice will gain heritage status, the city will renovate it

Holice - The cultural house in Holice, Pardubice region, will become a cultural monument. The city wants to renovate the building from the 1960s. Due to heritage protection, a structural-historical survey must precede everything. Ondřej Výborný (PRO Holice), the mayor, said this to ČTK. The declaration as a monument will happen soon, he added.

"On a general level, we are glad that it will be a monument; the house deserves it. It is preserved, original. On the other hand, this will place greater demands on us in preparing repairs and subsequent reconstruction," said Výborný.

The city has already commissioned the structural-historical survey. A specialized company will determine what the house looked like after its completion in 1962. The survey will be the basis for the implementation study. Last year, the city had to stop it because the heritage proceedings began in the spring. The nearby African Museum of Dr. Emil Holub will also receive heritage protection.

After the study, there will be project documentation. "The house needs to be taken from the ground up, the utilities repaired, and modernized entirely. The biggest intervention will be the construction of an elevator. After consulting with the heritage protectors, it will be possible to do so. The building is not barrier-free," said the mayor.

The total renovation of the house will cost tens of millions of crowns, and more precise estimates are not yet available. This year, the structural-historical survey and implementation study could be completed. "If we start designing this year, we will be very pleased. Designing a building of this size takes about a year to a year and a half. We will definitely want to obtain grant titles for the reconstruction, and we are more likely talking about starting construction in 2026," said Výborný.

For the construction in Holice, they used a standard project of a cultural house by author Štefan Imrich from Bratislava from 1956. The building was completed mainly thanks to volunteers in 1962. The building is in the style of the waning socialist realism. It includes an atomic shelter. Heritage protectors have been researching the architecture of the 1960s and 70s in the Czech Republic. Proposals for heritage protection of the cultural house in Holice and other buildings from that period in the country were submitted last March.