The demolition of Hotel Praha has the green light, no one has appealed
The demolition company has started clearing Hotel Praha, the demolition will begin in the next few days. The town hall confirmed that nobody appealed against the decision of the building authority of Prague 6, which allowed the demolition, before the deadline expired. The building is owned by the PPF group, which wants to build a school and establish a park on the premises. Adjacent buildings can also go to the ground.
Gabriela Kočová from the demolition company APB Plzeň said that within ten days, the demolition of the adjacent buildings will begin, that is, more than 60 garages, a greenhouse and the building of the southern gatehouse with the farm yard and gate. So far, the workers have started with preparatory work – manual dismantling, clearing of buildings and disconnection of utility networks.
According to preliminary estimates, all demolition work, including material removal and landscaping, will take five months, according to data published on the owner’s website. Demolition of the hotel itself should take approximately three and a half months. “The modern technology of ‘cutting up’ with special construction machines was chosen for the removal of the buildings,” PPF spokesman Radek Stavěl said earlier. “This technology enables rapid work progress, its use reduces noise and dustiness, and it will completely replace the used blasting,” he added.
On the site of the hotel, the owner wants to restore a park that was there until the 1970s. But the greenery will no longer be accessible to the public, as it was in the past. Instead of garages, there will be a connection with neighboring properties and the land of the Hadovka area. The investor plans to build an Open Gate elementary school and gymnasium here, modeled after the same area in Babice u Prahy.
Hotel Praha was built at the end of the 1970s. Until November 1989, it served the needs of the Communist Party and the Czechoslovak government. many therefore perceive him as a symbol of the pre-November era. At the beginning of last year, a new owner bought it with the intention of demolishing it. Immediately, a group of theoreticians, artists, architects and preservationists submitted a proposal to the Ministry of Culture for its declaration as a cultural monument. But not all experts agree. Architectural historian Zdeněk Lukeš, for example, stated in the press that he considers the building to be average architecture.
However, according to the hotel’s fans, the building is a unique example of architecture that deviates from the average of the time. The works of art, decoration and furniture in the interiors are an unusually comprehensive set of contemporary art and design. The main architects of the building were Jaroslav Paroubek, Radko Černý and Arnošt Navrátil, a number of other authors appear on the generous design of the exterior and interior. PPF, on the other hand, points out that the building is oversized and uneconomical.