Luxury hotel or apartments. The dilapidated monastery near the center of Prague will change
The area of the dilapidated former monastery of St. Gabriela, the new owner called Gabriel Loci, now lives in construction, but it is not yet a reconstruction. The second year of the Designblok show is going to take place here, and the rooms of the dilapidated building will be filled in a few days by expositions of domestic and foreign authors. The series also alternates between film crews and, for example, one-off music projects.
“It will certainly take several more years before we can start implementing a project or reconstruction of this space, because the building cannot remain in this state,” first Miroslav Kosnar, CEO of Cimex Group. “He’s very devastated after many years of not investing in it, so the events that take place here and commercial leases are helping us get through this period.”
Gabriel Loci
Former monastery of the Benedictine Women’s Order in Smíchov, Prague.
The building is located close to the Kinský Garden and is exhibited in the neo-Romanesque style, it also includes the Church of the Annunciation.
Since 1919, the complex has been owned by the state and used by its postal organization, most recently the Czech Post. Since 2020, it has been the owner of the Cimex Group.
The final word on what will happen to the monastery has not yet come. When the former monastery was bought by the Cimex company from the Czech Post for 353 million crowns, it spoke of the reconstruction into a luxury hotel. But that was before the covidu-19 pandemic came, which froze the hotel market for many months and drove tourists out of Prague.
But we still get the best reflection on the hotel, we calculate and think how to handle it.
“Consideration of what to do with the object was definitely more. But we still get the best reflection on the hotel, on the contrary, we count and think about how to handle it, because it is a large space and a unique place, “said Miroslav Kosnar for Seznam Zprávy.
“Reconstructing the complex into flats is also one of the considerations, on the contrary, the building is very complicated in layout. There would be many interesting nice apartments, but also ones that would not be so popular. So there are such considerations here, as well as a combination of hotel operations and part of serviced apartments, apartments, but all this is a matter for the future, “describes Miroslav Kosnar.
The last mentioned model is being tested by the company in another project in Senovážná street in the center of Prague. In the summer, it opened the first apartments called Orea Place Seno, which combine the privacy of guests with hotel service and other services.
How much will it cost?
It would be nice if it wasn’t a two billion project.
“It would be nice if it wasn’t a two-billion project,” says the head of Cimex, exaggeratingly, about the future budget of the reconstruction. The original plans provide for a billion. “We would definitely go for it again, we fell in love with that place,” he adds. According to him, he considers the pandemic, which has sharply increased the prices of construction work and materials, to be a very unpleasant, but only temporary period.
Cimex Group
Investment and real estate group, which focuses mainly on hotel, administrative and development projects.
The group owns and operates eight administrative complexes in Prague and Karlovy Vary. Its portfolio also includes the domestic OREA Hotels & Resorts network.
The total value of its portfolio in the Czech Republic exceeds 15 billion crowns, its investment activities are not limited to the Czech Republic, they are also dedicated to other hotel and residential projects in the USA.
The owners of the group are Jana Sobotová and Petr Lukeš.
You can watch the whole interview with Miroslav Kosnar in the video above.