The state has selected a tenant for the cubist house, there will be clothing there

Prague - The Ministry of Culture has selected a new tenant for part of the space in the Cubist House at the Black Madonna after seven months. The company Mestra House, which sells clothing, has been chosen. It has secured a lease for eight years and is expected to open on January 1, 2008. This was announced today by the press spokesperson of the Ministry of Culture, Marcela Žižková.
    The company will pay 960,000 crowns for quarterly rent and 125,000 crowns as an advance for operating costs. According to the contract, the rent may increase from 2009. Until the end of the year, however, the tenant will pay one crown per month for rent and will make adjustments to the space they have acquired. Mestra House operates, for example, a Debenhams store in Wenceslas Square.
    The House at the Black Madonna, built in 1912 by Josef Gočár as a department store, houses the Museum of Czech Cubism. On the ground floor is a shop selling replicas of artistic items, while in the second part there used to be a bookstore. Its operator left due to what he considered high rent, and the Ministry of Culture, which manages the house through the State Cultural Fund, announced a tender for this place back in April. The bookseller was paying around 250,000 crowns a month.
    The Ministry initially stated that it wanted to have a new tenant in the house by July. "During the summer holidays, exploratory work, negotiations with heritage protectors regarding the project, and the actual project development took place. A valid decision from the heritage protectors, which allowed the completion of the project documentation, was issued at the end of September," the spokesperson said.
    The rental price was not set in the tender; offers were primarily evaluated based on the proposed rent. When announcing the tender, the spokesperson for ČTK stated that the quality of the business and investment plan would also influence the decision regarding the tenant. Thirteen applicants entered the competition.
    Today, she stated that the State Cultural Fund, when evaluating the offers together with the National Gallery, considered not just the selection of a financially stable partner who would guarantee trouble-free rental of the space, including relevant payments, but also an activity that would not endanger or diminish the value of the valuable property. The offer from Mestra House, when considering all circumstances, placed first among the offers, she stated.
    In exchange for the temporary symbolic rent of one crown, the company will make construction adjustments to the space and prepare it for the installation of air conditioning, which is to be built not only in the store but also in the upper floors of the house in the cubism exhibition. However, this exhibition was closed for three months in the summer, during the peak tourist season, due to the heat this year and last year.
    On October 18, the Ministry announced a call for bids for the implementation of air conditioning in a simplified tender procedure. The price of the contract is 12 million crowns. The Cultural Fund aims to select its contractor in November, with the first phase of installation to take place in the store.
    The Cubist house belongs to the State Cultural Fund and the Ministry of Finance. The fund owes millions of crowns to the state, which it received to cover losses from the Czech lottery. The Cubist house, along with the palace at Hibernů, was halted by the Ministry of Culture due to the start-up of the lottery. The money from the rental of the space in the Cubist house is one of the few sources of the fund.