The Liberec Region Council approved the purchase of the Ještěd hotel and transmitter

Liberec - The council of the Liberec Region today approved the purchase of the mountain hotel and transmitter Ještěd from Czech Radiocommunications (ČRa). The region will pay 181 million crowns for the building, and an additional nearly three million will be added for furniture, equipment, and other accessories. The funds are prepared from last year, so the region does not need to go into debt for this. Although some opposition representatives from ANO had reservations about the purchase in the past, all present voted in favor today.

"It is a landmark; we know this, which is why we supported the purchase. We never disputed it; we just pointed out the fact that there are a lot of unresolved issues, that there are problems with sewage, electricity, and other utilities; we wanted someone to address them. In the end, it worked out, and our colleague's (Josef) Chuchlík's comments and suggestions were incorporated into the contract," said David Pražák, chairman of the opposition club ANO, in support of the Ještěd acquisition to ČTK.

The mountain hotel and transmitter Ještěd have been in operation since 1973 and are among the most original architectural works in the Czech Republic. Architect Karel Hubáček received the prestigious international Perret Prize for the project in 1969. People elected the building as the Czech construction of the 20th century. ČRa has owned the hotel and transmitter since 2000, acquiring them for 85 million crowns and investing additional tens of millions into repairs. They offered Ještěd to the Ministry of Culture, but it has no interest in the valuable building listed on the indicative UNESCO heritage list.

Since 2006, Ještěd has been a national cultural monument; the Liberec Region discussed its acquisition back in 2008 when a coalition led by ODS was in charge. At that time, ČRa offered the building not only to the region but also to the city, which, however, rejected the purchase. A year later, the new regional representation led by ČSSD halted the negotiations, stating that there were no funds for the purchase, and the prepared 100 million would be used to pre-finance the renovation of regional roads that received funding from the Regional Operational Program (ROP).

On Wednesday, the governor will sign the purchase agreement, which must then be approved by the Ministry of Culture. "Every owner of a building listed as a national monument, if they wish to sell the property, must offer the purchase agreement to the Ministry of Culture for review to see if the state might be interested in the building under the same conditions. From preliminary discussions, I expect that the state will not want to be the owner of Ještěd," said Governor Martin Půta (Mayors for the Liberec Region), who presented the material to the council. According to him, the state has already rejected the takeover of Ještěd twice.

The building is in poor condition and needs renovation, with preliminary costs estimated at 400 million crowns. "We have an architectural study from 2019, but we need to wait for the project documentation to be completed. From that, some amount will definitely emerge, based on which the competition will then be held. The sources are primarily the regional budget and some grant from the Ministry of Culture. I think there is a clear model here, and that is the memoranda for the restoration of the fortress towns of Josefov and Terezín; a third route is the Modernization Fund," Půta added.

In March, the region plans to announce a public competition for project preparation, with 15 million crowns allocated in the budget for that purpose. The region aims to have the project completed by the end of next year, and the regional leadership will negotiate financing options with the government.