From the historical tram depot in Malá Strana, there is to be a hotel

Prague - Former co-owner of the Czech Coal company Petr Pudil plans to build a luxury hotel with six above-ground and three underground floors in the historic center of Prague at the foot of the Old Castle Steps. This will involve the renovation of a historic building of a tram switching station of the Prague Public Transport Company located in Klárov on U Bruských kasáren street. This is indicated by the EIA database. The Ministry of Culture is currently deciding whether to declare the building a cultural monument.
    According to the documentation for the zoning decision, the hotel will include 205 rooms, a restaurant, a wellness area with an area of 375 m², and a meeting room. There will be 127 parking spaces in two underground floors.
    The investor and owner of the building is the company Property Klárov, which is owned by Pudil through his family foundation. The municipal environment department previously decided that the investor does not need to produce a comprehensive EIA study assessing the impact of the construction on the environment. The company now needs to obtain a zoning decision and a building permit.
    The neo-classical tram switching station, located opposite the Old Castle Steps, was designed by architect Vilém Kvasnička and was built in the 1930s. It was put into operation in 1932. Besides the technological background, it contains offices and two apartments. The switching station serves tram transport from Malá Strana through Hradčany to Letná. Last year, the Prague Public Transport Company announced that it plans to invest over 50 million CZK in modernizing aging technologies.
    The switching station will remain in the building in the future, only it will be relocated to the first underground floor. Along with it, there will be a transformer station of PRE distribution, which is currently part of the building.
    The director of the municipal heritage care department, Jiří Skalický, pointed out that last year the Ministry of Culture initiated proceedings to declare the property a cultural monument.
    "This is an architecturally and urbanistically high-quality technical building that represents a high level of interwar architecture. The heritage value of the property lies primarily in its coherent integration into the urban structure, as well as in the spatial and mass composition of the uniformly conceived historic urban complex," stated Skalický. He added that the building contributes to the creation of the historical environment of the area.
    The head of Prague's heritage office considers the greatest flaw of the transformer station to be the structural disruption, static disturbance of both vertical pillars supporting two arches of the northeastern facade on U Bruských kasáren street, as well as mercury and oil product contamination.