BREAKING NEWS! Mega real-estate deal planned at Budapest’s largest railway stations, says Vitézy
Dávid Vitézy, the leader of the Podmaniczky Movement in the city assembly, has said a mega real estate deal is being planned in which the landholdings of Budapest’s four major train stations would be leased out for 99 years and developers would be able to commercialise the stations and their surroundings “for free.”
Speaking at a press conference on Monday at Nyugati Square, Vitézy said construction and transport minister János Lázár had opened the deal allowing national railway company MÁV to lease out the properties. He said the seven-page tender issued would close at the end of January. As we wrote earlier, Outrage erupts as Hungarian minister Lázár crosses the line with offensive remarks: Vitézy is an ‘aberrant, liberal kids, bootlicker’
Vitézy said MÁV had shown him the draft contract which included neither a purchase price nor a rental fee. Moreover, it did not prescribe any developments for prospective investors, he said.
He said Lázár’s ministry had claimed that the tenders only concerned the renovation of the station buildings, which he called “misleading”, as the tenders also would allow private companies access to areas of 15-30 hectares surrounding the stations, he added.
He said the tenders failed to include where and what the applicants should develop “in these vast areas” and had not been preceded by any consultation with either the districts or the capital.
He said that selling Budapest’s brownfield sites to investors “based on a seven-page shopping list” was typical of “the most corrupt countries in the developing world.”
Vitézy ended his Facebook post with this:
“Even in Africa or Latin America, such a unilateral tender, which would leave the state, the railways and passengers at the mercy of private interests for 99 years, would be a surprise.
There is indeed enormous development potential lying dormant in these areas of Budapest, with missing institutional and residential developments in disused railway areas, new parks, even a new Budapest congress centre behind the Nyugati, and the ideal location for the new Buda super-hospital near Kelenföld. Once the tunnel is built in the future, the South site will offer enormous urban development potential.
However, the successful development of a key area for a city region of three million people and the major railway stations serving the city can only be driven by the public interest. Turning off the public interest, driven solely by profit interests, will not bring a good end to urban development on this scale. We might have hoped that Hungary had learnt this lesson after the turbulent transition of regime change. János Lázár’s current move shows once again that he has learnt something quite different from the muddled period that followed the change of regime, and he not only wants to bring it back, but also wants to change the scale.”
The entire press conference here (in Hungarian):
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