Negotiations for the sale of the destroyed department store of René Benko on Mariahilfer Straße are entering their final phase. Construction could start again before the end of the year
While the ruins of the ‘Lamarr’ department store on Mariahilfer Strasse are still in a petrified state, there is even more intense activity behind the scenes: curator Clemens Richter is slowly starting negotiations with the future owner.
Richter also mentions ‘five or six bidders’ who are still in the running and have proven to him that they have the necessary money and the necessary concepts to give the concrete skeleton a future again. That also means that none of them were deterred by the legal fire of a former interested party, which was apparently intended to ruin the price.
Legal problems were quickly extinguished
The disruption consisted of a complaint, which in turn led to a dispute being noted in the land registry. For the future owner, this would have meant that he would probably also have to take over the disputes that René Benko left behind with the house from the Signa bankruptcy. Curator Richter is pleased that the Public Prosecution Service has withdrawn the complaint, because there was no initial suspicion due to the ‘signal effect’ that should deter further saboteurs.
Richter is now actively engaging with the remaining bidders. Many of them have “a lot of questions right now” about the construction, depending on their own plans for completion and future use. Richter is arranging for interviews with those who previously worked on the site. As a next step, Richter will set a deadline by which binding bids must finally be submitted. Early fall seems a realistic time frame for this, as the trustee continues to work diligently on his plan to find a new owner for the house before the onset of winter.
Building further is realistic this year
Richter estimates that the contracts will take “two to three months” to draw up, which could mean construction will continue before the end of the year. Ultimately, all bidders have one goal: to execute their plans as quickly as possible after the contract is awarded – and they want to make money doing it.
Source: Krone
I’m Ben Stock, a journalist and author at Today Times Live. I specialize in economic news and have been working in the news industry for over five years. My experience spans from local journalism to international business reporting. In my career I’ve had the opportunity to interview some of the world’s leading economists and financial experts, giving me an insight into global trends that is unique among journalists.
