Poděbrady approved cooperation with the owner of the Pink Elephant due to the cultural hall

Poděbrady – The representatives of Poděbrady today approved a cooperation agreement with the owner of the Pink Elephant department store, Bene Domus, for the Pink Elephant cultural and commercial center project at an extraordinary session. The city is set to acquire the third and fourth floors of the department store in exchange for the adjacent parking lot, which is mostly on municipal land. The floors of the building are to house a multifunctional city social hall for up to 700 people. The agreement was approved today by 12 out of 19 present representatives after more than three hours of discussion.

"This is a long-standing problem that has been repeatedly discussed at city council meetings, and it has been included in the electoral programs of virtually all relevant political parties running in local elections since the 1990s. The current city leadership is approaching the solution to this problem with utmost seriousness and is diligently working on it as one of its priorities to finally see it through," said mayor Roman Schulz (ODS) at the beginning of the meeting.

According to Deputy Mayor Ladislav Langr (Volba pro Poděbrady), who presented the proposal, the city has lacked a large social hall for about 50 years. "This is currently the quickest and cheapest solution, considering the required capacity," said Langr. He further stated that the reconstruction would improve an unattractive part of the city; a bonus would also be the increase in parking spaces in the city center. A part of the planned agreement is indeed the company's commitment to build a parking garage on the site of the current parking lot, which should have a capacity of 140 spaces for the public. According to Langr, the cooperation agreement is only declarative in nature and will be followed by two purchase agreements, which will be presented again to the representatives.

The meeting included a presentation of the proposal for an architectural study for the reconstruction and extension of the department store. The hall is planned to accommodate up to 700 people and will feature independent barrier-free access and a terrace. The current estimated cost to the city for the reconstruction and extension is around 193 million crowns. In response to a question regarding financing, Langr stated that the city could allocate 100 million crowns from reserves, and it could obtain more from the sale of so-called Hlinka houses, or it could consider selling shares in the spa.

For the conclusion of the agreement, for example, councilor Radek Smejkal (For the Citizens of Poděbrady) did not vote in favor. "I absolutely disagree that the first step towards the realization of the cultural center should be the signing of an agreement that would cause the city to lose a significant piece of land that generates rent, which gives the city a negotiating position and on which, under certain circumstances, a cultural center could be built properly, using new technologies, fully owned by the city," Smejkal stated today on his Facebook.

The estimated price of the third and fourth floors of the department store is about 31.5 million crowns, while the adjacent parking lot, approximately 2000 square meters in size, has an estimated price of around 19.5 million crowns, according to publicly available city materials.