Prague Public Transit Company signed a contract for the construction above the metro in Holešovice

Prague – It will be possible to build above the Prague metro station Nádraží Holešovice. Representatives of the transport company (DPP) and the company Nové Holešovice Development (NHD) have signed a shareholder agreement. The joint venture will be a joint-stock company with a registered capital of ten million CZK. DPP's head of communication, Daniel Šabík, informed CTK today. The shareholders will include DPP with a 25 percent share, while 75 percent will be owned by NHD, which is part of the developer group Karlín Group. The joint venture and construction above the station have faced criticism in the past.

The shareholder agreement and the statutes of the joint venture were already approved by the board of directors in August and the supervisory board of DPP in September. Based on the agreement of both investors, in about six months from the establishment of the joint venture, the CPI Property Group will enter Nové Holešovice Development, acquiring 50 percent of the shares. As a result, both investors will have an equal shareholder stake of 37.5 percent in the joint venture. This step will be subject to approval by the Office for the Protection of Competition (ÚOHS).

The statutory body of the joint venture will be a three-member board of directors, and the control body will be a supervisory board with the same number of members. Investors have the right to nominate two members of the board of directors and one member of the supervisory board. In the case of DPP, it is the opposite, nominating one member of the board of directors and two members of the supervisory board.

"In the past, the city unnecessarily got rid of valuable plots and lost control over them. We have come a long way since then. We are not getting rid of them. We want to develop them further with private investors. Thanks to a shared vision, the previously neglected area will receive an impulse for further development, but we will continue to have control over it for the city," said Deputy Mayor Adam Scheinherr (Praha Sobě). According to the deputy, another advantage is that the city will gain private capital for infrastructure repairs.

The planned joint project involves the renovation of the northern vestibule of the metro station and the construction of administrative and residential buildings in the surrounding area. DPP has land at the station, which, according to representatives of the city and the company, cannot be developed without an agreement with the owners of the surrounding parcels. The construction will connect to a construction project in the neighboring Bubnů-Zátorů area.

The DPP's approach has faced criticism in the past from, for example, the co-ruling United Forces for Prague (TOP 09 and STAN) and opposition parties in the Prague council. In this context, the company commissioned two additional legal analyses, which, according to representatives of the company's management, confirmed the correctness of the procedure. DPP's General Director Petr Witowski stated that a similar model of cooperation should also be used in the future for the development of other metro stations, as the management considers it the best way to enhance property value, which is common abroad.