Penta has obtained a building permit for a giant office in Prague

Photo: florentinum.cz

Prague - The investment group Penta has received a building permit for the construction of one of the largest office buildings in Prague, which will be built near Florence on the site of the former headquarters of Rudé právo. The company announced this today. The investment in the project amounts to 200 million euros, or about five billion crowns.
    "Construction work will begin immediately after the completion of demolition work, which is in the second half of March 2012. The full operation of the building is planned for the turn of the third and fourth quarters of 2013. We are proceeding in accordance with our original schedule," said Petr Palička, director of Penta's Czech real estate division.
    The complex under construction, named Florentinum, will offer 49,000 square meters of office space, making it the largest administrative building in the capital built in one phase. Approximately one-fifth of the planned area has already been leased in advance by the consulting company Ernst & Young, the newspaper E15 recently wrote.
    Penta is a Central European investment group, founded in 1994. It primarily invests in retail, healthcare, aviation manufacturing, engineering, energy, entertainment, and banking. It operates in several countries in Europe, with the most investment projects realized in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Poland. The name Penta has also appeared in connection with the Slovak corruption scandal Gorilla.
    In the last quarter of last year, companies in Prague leased 85,000 square meters of modern office space, which, according to the Prague Research Forum, a consortium of real estate consulting firms, is a year-on-year increase of 19 percent. Compared to the previous quarter, leasing increased by 65 percent. In total, there were 2.8 million square meters of office space in the capital in the last quarter.