Mayor Karácsony: Budapest can baulk Grand Budapest project on Rákosrendező

Budapest has pre-emption rights over the entire Rákosrendező area, Gergely Karácsony, the city’s mayor, said on Facebook on Sunday.

Regarding a browfield area in Budapest’s 14th district, which is subject to conflicting development plans by the government and the municipality, Karácsony said the legal situation was “clear and unequivocal”.

The seller, the Hungarian state, informed the buyers in the sale and purchase agreement that two Budapest-owned companies have pre-emption rights over the entire area, he said.

The purchase contract stipulates that the investor must pay the first installment of the purchase price within ten days of the Hungarian state presenting declarations waiving the right of pre-emption or the deadline for exercising pre-emption rights “has passed uneventfully”, he said. “That deadline won’t pass uneventfully,” Karácsony added.

The mayor said the current owner, the Hungarian state, “has allowed this especially valuable area to decay and be polluted for decades.”

He said it was time that development started according to “principles espoused by practically the entire profession of city development”, which he said had been strengthened by the latest decision of the Budapest assembly on the matter.