In Ostrava, a 238 m tall building, the highest in the Czech Republic, will be constructed

Ostrava – In the future, Ostrava could have the tallest building in the Czech Republic. City councilors today decided on the sale of land in the city center, where the Ostrava company RT Torax intends to build a commercial administrative center with a hotel and apartments in a building with 60 floors and a height of 238 meters. The construction is expected to cost over two billion crowns.

The plot of land, covering an area of 8300 m², is located along 28th October street, near the Nová Karolina shopping complex, colloquially referred to as "Slza". The city will sell it for 61.7 million crowns. The city has been working on the sale of the land since last May. It demanded at least 37 million crowns for it and wanted a building with a minimum of 12 above-ground floors to be erected there.

"Since the 1980s, there has been talk of a high-rise building being constructed on the Slza plot. The Ostrava Tower project completely fulfills this vision. The 60-story building with a height of 238 meters would also become the tallest building in the Czech Republic," stated Mayor Tomáš Macura (ANO). Currently, the tallest building in the country is the AZ Tower in Brno, standing at 111 meters.

According to Deputy Mayor Zuzana Bajgarová (ANO), the city received two offers, one of which had to be excluded as it did not meet the city’s financial requirements. The winning project includes a commercial administrative center with two towers – a residential tower with 48 floors and an administrative tower with 60 floors. The lower floors of the administrative tower are planned to host offices, while the upper part will have a hotel with a sky-view restaurant, commercial spaces at ground level, and a conference center. The construction will also include shared underground garages for approximately 700 cars.

The transfer of the land is contractually tied to the payment of the full purchase price and the issuance of a final building permit, which the company must apply for by December 2022. The building must be completed by May 2026. The city has a right of first refusal on the land until the completion of the new building. According to Bajgarová, discussions about the contract took quite a long time. The deputy admitted that the city has already registered doubts regarding the feasibility of this project. Some opposition councilors also questioned it. "I don't like to jump ahead, and I would leave this truly to the verification of the project documentation. In any case, it is a multiple exceedance of our requirements," Bajgarová remarked.

According to architect Ondřej Chybík from a Brno architectural studio collaborating on the project, the architectural study is already being processed. The final architectural form of the building may be available before Christmas. "Geological surveys are being conducted; we have a 120-meter deep drill... and we have structural engineers from Frankfurt who have looked at the foundational data," Chybík stated. The subsoil is expected to handle the load caused by the construction according to preliminary estimates.

The media representative of RT Torax, Jindřich Vaněk, stated that the anticipated cost of constructing the building exceeds two billion crowns. The company plans to secure financing partly from its own resources and partly with the help of a consortium of banks, which have promised assistance in financing the project. According to Vaněk, the company has conducted preliminary surveys with potential tenants and will be able to fill the properties.