One Bid, CZK 1.221bn, and Prague 6 Walks Away From Its Cultural Centre Tender

Prague 6 intends to cancel the procurement for the cultural centre planned in the completion of Vítězné náměstí. The single bid it received came to CZK 1,220,886,104 excluding VAT against an estimated contract value of CZK 800 million. The district assembly was to vote on cancelling the procedure on Thursday, and a new tender is planned for February 2027. Mayor Jakub Stárek (ODS) set this out to reporters on 27 August, ČTK reported.

A competitive dialogue that stopped being competitive

The procedure ran as a competitive dialogue, and two consortia entered it. One withdrew during the process. That left Fourth Quadrant as the sole participant, and in July it submitted the bid the district is now refusing.

The district says an expert opinion confirmed that the price offered is not usual in that place and at that time, given the absence of a competing bid. That is the substance of the objection: not that the number is high in the abstract, but that nothing in the procedure was left to test it against.

As a responsible administrator we cannot accept that amount.

— Jakub Stárek (ODS), mayor of Prague 6

Stárek was explicit that ending the procedure is not ending the project.

We are closing this procedure now, but at the same time we are starting again. We know that we want it — the cultural centre — but some work still has to be done before we can get to the final stage. The whole step is so that we can start talking about the price again.

— Jakub Stárek (ODS), mayor of Prague 6

What the district loses by waiting

The centre is meant to hold two halls for concerts, exhibitions, theatre performances and community events, with a main hall for up to 1,000 standing visitors — a room the district says would also be used for school-leavers' balls — plus a smaller hall, a café and bar facilities.

Prague 6's case for it is that the district has neither a larger cultural venue nor a natural gathering space of the kind náměstí Jiřího z Poděbrad provides in Prague 3. Stárek said the district also wants to own the building if it can, so that it can go on shaping how it works, but that the decisive thing is that the centre gets built at all: Prague 6 has no other suitable land for it.

That last point is what gives the re-tender its shape. The district is not choosing between sites or between schemes. It is negotiating over price on the only plot it has, with a counterparty that owns the ground.

Whose ground it is

The cultural centre is part of the planned development of the so-called fourth quadrant of Vítězné náměstí, where a multifunctional complex with flats, offices, shops, services and restaurants is to go up. The University of Chemistry and Technology (VŠCHT) will build a new university building there with teaching rooms, student facilities and spaces open to the public.

The land in the location is owned chiefly by Fourth Quadrant, the company associating Penta Real Estate, Sekyra Group and Kaprain — which is also the bidder whose price the district has just declined. A February re-tender restores the possibility of competition on paper. Whether it restores it in practice is the question the last procedure answered badly, and the one the next one inherits.