Smíchov City's Investor Will Pay 120 Million Towards the School the District Could Not Afford

The company building Smíchov City has signed a donation agreement with the City of Prague worth 120 million crowns, and the city assembly approved accepting it last week. Part of the money goes to the new primary school on the former railway land, ZŠ Smíchov City. Prague 5, which announced the agreement on 15 September, describes it as the conclusion of a long-running arrangement between the city, the district and the developer.

The donor is Hrotano Czech, s. r. o. The reason the money goes to the city rather than to the district is the more interesting half of the story.

Why the district gave the school away

ZŠ Smíchov City has been in preparation since 2016. It is designed for 580 children and Prague 5 puts the cost at roughly 1.16 billion crowns. In July the district completed the transfer of the project to the city, on the plain ground that building it exceeds what the district's finances can do. A 1.16-billion school is not a municipal-district scale of investment, and Prague 5 stopped pretending otherwise.

We managed to negotiate that the city will deliver the new educational facility as well as the transport infrastructure, which is why the contribution flows directly to it.

— Zdeněk Doležal (ODS), Prague 5 councillor for spatial development

Mayor Lukáš Herold (ODS) says the school could be operating by 2030. The visualisations the district published are credited to Office Ou & Inostudio and Atelier M1 architekti.

Building the primary school in Smíchov City is one of the most important investments in Prague 5's future. The new quarter will bring thousands of new residents to Smíchov and it could not do without the corresponding school infrastructure.

— Lukáš Herold (ODS), mayor of Prague 5

What else the investor is committed to

Beyond the donation, Hrotano Czech is to build at its own cost two large parks and a boulevard with shops and services. That is the part of a masterplanned quarter that usually gets promised and then argued about, so the specifics of the last item matter more than the headline sum.

On the final block, by the Radlická kulturní sportovna, the investor is to build a public space and hand it to the district. That space is to go through an architectural competition by 31 December 2027 at the latest, and for five years after completion the investor is to manage and maintain it at its own expense.

A dated competition obligation and a five-year maintenance obligation are the two things that distinguish a public space a developer builds from one a developer draws. Both are in this agreement, with a deadline attached to the first.

The arithmetic worth holding onto

The donation is 120 million against a school costing about 1.16 billion. It covers roughly a tenth of the building, and the district's own wording is that the city will use part of the gift on the school — the agreement also names transport infrastructure in Prague 5 as a purpose. So this is a contribution to the cost of the district Smíchov City is generating, not a payment for the school.

Prague 5's headline calls the sum "almost 120 million"; the body of its announcement gives the donation as 120 million crowns. We have used the figure from the text.

The scale on the other side of the ledger is what gives the number its meaning. Thousands of residents are moving into a quarter built on land that had no school of its own, and the school that is meant to serve them is still, in September 2026, a project with a design, a transferred client and a first tranche of private money — not a building site.