A Firm That Never Bid Held Kampa Up for Months. The Competition Authority Has Now Dismissed It

The review that stalled the rebuilding of Kampa is over. ÚOHS, the competition authority, confirmed Prague 1's conduct of the tender, rejected the challenge at first instance and then dismissed the appeal against that rejection. The decision has now become legally binding, which means the district can sign the contract with the firm it picked and start work on the park.

The contract went to Konsorcium park KAMPA at a bid of 51,899,816 crowns excluding VAT. Prague 1 says that is roughly 16.7 million below both the expected budget and the financial framework its own assembly had approved — an unusually large gap for a landscape contract of this size, and the district's own argument that the tender worked.

The objection arrived ten minutes before the deadline

The challenge came from KRAJINNÁ ZELEŇ s.r.o. Two details in the district's account are worth keeping together. The company did not submit a bid of its own. And its objections — which were against the tender conditions, not against the evaluation — were delivered ten minutes before the deadline for bids closed.

Objections to tender conditions are a legitimate instrument and the authority is obliged to hear them. But the combination here is the reason this cost months rather than weeks: a complaint about the rules of a competition, from a party not entering it, lodged at the last possible moment.

The review delayed the project by several months, but that chapter is closed now. What matters is that Prague 1's procedure held up and we can concentrate on the revitalisation itself. We will now agree the schedule with the contractor and publish it afterwards. Kampa is busy all year round, so the work has to be phased to disturb residents, visitors, businesses and local associations as little as possible.

— Kateřina Klasnová, deputy mayor of Prague 1 for the environment

The money comes from four places

The 51.9 million is not a single line in the district's budget. Prague 1 has already received 8 million crowns from the city towards the revitalisation. A further roughly 6 million is the street lighting and its installation, agreed with Technologie hlavního města Prahy, the city's lighting company. About 8 million more is expected from a European grant for green infrastructure. The playground element has its own city grant, from the programme for projects improving the environment.

That layering is ordinary for a Prague park project, and it is also why the tender saving matters: the parts funded from outside the district's own budget were fixed before the bid came in.

A design that took thirty years to reach a contractor

The scheme keeps the park's basic character and layout. Paths are renewed along their present alignment rather than redrawn. The works cover tree and shrub care and new planting, restored furniture, public lighting of the Pražská lucerna type, new fencing along the Čertovka, drinking fountains and mist sprays, a pétanque surface, changes to the children's playground including a pergola for shade, and a green roof on the public lavatory.

The design is by the architect Magdalena Kurfürstová of studio TAK, and it came out of a participation process that Prague 1 says drew nearly 600 people — surveys, collected suggestions, guided walks and public debates in the Sala Terrena on Kampa itself. The district says those comments fed into the final design, which was also developed with heritage conservation and professional bodies.

The district dates the preparation and argument over this park at thirty years.

I am glad that after so many years we have finally got to this point. There is no longer any reason to keep postponing Kampa's renewal.

— Terezie Radoměřská, mayor of Prague 1

What is still not known

The schedule. Prague 1 says it will be agreed with the contractor and published then, so the one thing a Kampa regular would want — when the fences appear and where — is the piece that does not exist yet. The district does say the park will not be closed as a whole, and that it will announce the temporary restrictions attached to each phase.