Prague 5 gives a change in the Cibulka zoning plan. It will allow the construction of a hospice
Today it was approved by the city council. The long-dilapidated homestead was bought by the foundation of the general director of the antivirus company Avast, Ondřej Vlček, and his wife Katarína at the beginning of last year, and is now completing an architectural competition for a hospice.
“It was clear that we needed to build a new wing somewhere on Cibulka, that is, a new building,” said the director of the foundation, Ivana Plechatá, at a meeting of deputies. Therefore, according to one part of the land adjacent to the homestead, it is necessary to change in the zoning plan from park areas to a mixed function, which will allow expansion. Substitutable incentives of the city district to change the vast majority of votes. The city council decides on the change of the final zoning plan.
Opposition representative Karel Kryl (Pirates) said that there could be a problem with the fact that the investor has not yet submitted a construction study, which is usually requested by the municipal committee for territorial development. Zuzana Hamanová (for STAN), chairwoman of the committee for territorial development of the city district, said that an architectural competition had been announced for the design of the building and that no documents could be published until the results were announced. Plechatá said that the results of the competition will be known on March 3.
The director also said that there was no risk of anything other than the declared facility for the care of children with incurable diseases in the homestead. According to her, the buildings are registered in the foundation’s charter and are inalienable by law. “It is not possible to transfer the property to a commercial or other entity in any way, it could again be a foundation, which, however, would have to fulfill the original purpose again,” she said.
The planned hospice is to be used by children with life-threatening illnesses and their families. It will also be intended for children, the treatment has already been exhausted and they need so-called palliative care at the end of life. At the same time, according to the foundation’s information, part of the building will serve the public – a café and a clubhouse or a common room for educational, social or cultural events will be established there.
The fate of the unused homestead has been going on since the 1990s, and it was reoccupied by squatters. The previous owner of the homestead, Oldřich Vaníček, approached the City Hall of Prague 5 last year with an offer to buy, but then he changed his mind and began negotiations with another interested party. This turned out to be the Vlček Foundation. The couple Ondřej and Katarína Vlček invested 1.5 billion crowns in their newly established foundation with the aim of building a children’s hospice and palliative care center.
The Vlčeks follow up on the activities of their six-year-old charity organization Zlatá rybka, which has a mission to fulfill children’s wishes that have life-threatening illnesses. The assets of their family foundation come from Vlček’s quarter-century operation in Avast, which has since become a successful global software company. His wife Katarína is a doctor working in the mobile hospice Cesta domů.