Lake Balaton overrun with luxury properties and controversial projects

In recent years, the shores of Lake Balaton have seen a proliferation of large-scale investments, luxury buildings, and private properties. Often met with pushback from locals, the amount of green space and open beach areas is severely reduced with each new project. Despite the opposition of some residents, who have even taken matters to court, several giga-investments have been commenced and finished around Lake Balaton in the last decade or so.

Telex has collected the most important major controversial projects that have been completed already and which could be completed in the coming years around the lake.

The north shore of Lake Balaton

In Balatonakarattya, the conference centre of the Hungarian National Bank Foundation was erected in 2022 on the site of a former holiday resort used by the Hungarian Railways. A special feature of the conference centre is that the lake itself was channelled onto the property, with a permit to create a so-called “welfare water area”. Locals have criticised the project mainly because the new complex, which covers over 12,000 square metres, has significantly disturbed the environment and the surrounding infrastructure has not been adapted to the development.

The fate of the former waterfront campsites is the subject of some controversy in Balatonakali. One of them has closed for good, but the planned terraced houses have not been built on its site. The other was liquidated in 2016 and split in two, one half of which came to the ownership of Lőrinc Mészáros (this campsite still operates today), while on the other half, new apartment buildings have been erected. The latter project, called The Village Holiday, made the news in 2019 when the contractor demolished protected reeds in a 150-metre-long area, for which the two people on the contractor team received suspended prison sentences and fines.

In Badacsonyörs, part of Badacsonytomaj, a similar issue arose in 2021, when the owner of a camping site there cut down trees claiming that they were diseased, to the outrage of many. Residents and holiday homeowners organised a public forum to find out what works were planned in the area, eventually finding out that a four-star hotel, apartments, and a campsite were to be built at the previous campsite. However, the project has yet to be completed.

Balatonfüred is in a unique position when it comes to development: as Telex reports, although the number of projects linked to government officials is extremely high there—there is almost always some kind of project going on, the biggest being perhaps the Balaport real estate complex, which includes luxury apartments and a five-star hotel—local residents do not usually take a united stand against them.