Ostrava University acquired land for the construction of new facilities

Ostrava - The University of Ostrava (OU) has received land free of charge from the city for the creation of new buildings for the Faculty of Arts and the Center for Healthy Movement. City councilors today approved the free transfer of land worth approximately 42 million crowns to the university after about an hour of discussion; this involves roughly four hectares of land behind the Antonín Dvořák Theatre in the city center.

Ownership of the land is important for the university due to a grant application. "We must submit a project application for funding for both buildings by the end of June. This is the only opportunity in the next ten years to obtain such significant funding for new buildings for the University of Ostrava," said OU Chancellor Monika Šumberová to ČTK.

The university expects that the buildings will cost about 890 million crowns. It anticipates that the construction of the Faculty of Arts will cost 315 million crowns and the Center for Healthy Movement about 575 million crowns. The university intends to obtain the majority of the funds from the grant. "The grant program we intend to apply for requires a mandatory co-financing of five percent. The land we are receiving can also serve as a form of this co-financing, which is why it is important for us to own the land," Šumberová stated.

The university has already prepared the request for a zoning decision and the zoning process is ongoing; it plans to apply for a building permit. It expects to start looking for construction contractors at the beginning of next year and construction could begin as early as next summer, with everything expected to be completed two years later.

According to Šumberová, the buildings are extremely important for the university, as it rents sports facilities and lacks its own amenities. "Despite the fact that we rent them, we have managed to build an excellent kinanthropology workplace. For its further development, it is important to have a facility suited for our own research, for which we have recently received significant funding," noted Šumberová. Kinanthropology is the science of human movement. The Faculty of Arts also suffers from inadequate spaces, according to her.

Concerns about the donation of the land were mainly expressed by opposition councilors from the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSČM), who were interested in how the situation regarding the tram loop, which is part of the donated land, would be resolved, as well as the situation around the Miniuni miniature landmarks area. They also wanted to know why no architectural competition was announced for the buildings. Mayor Tomáš Macura (ANO) described the debate as surprising. According to him, Miniuni has been planning to relocate to the Slezskoostravský Castle for years. The city also wants to move the tram loop; it is just a matter of finding the location. Macura is fascinated that the absence of an architectural competition is criticized by a part of the opposition that is fundamentally against any architectural competition. He personally would welcome a competition, but due to the June deadline for the grant application, the university would not have been able to manage it.