Fixing failed companies and wanting to lift up Pec pod Sněžkou too. In Velká Úpa he'll build small apartments at Prague-1 prices

The center of Velká Úpa, a town district attached to Pec pod Sněžkou, does not exactly look appealing. Anyone driving through it from Horní Maršov cannot help noticing, on the right-hand side, a cluster of neglected buildings that disfigure the center of the mountain settlement. They make it easy to forget the construction and investment activity usually associated with mountain resorts. That, however, is about to change – right here, below the Portášky ski area, one of the largest development projects in the Krkonoše mountains is set to arise.

„Actually, this will probably be the last big project in the Krkonoše for a long time, because there's nowhere left here to build on a greenfield site or a brownfield,“ shrugs lawyer and investor Jan Langmeier. He, together with his fund Aequitas Capital Investment, intends to transform Velká Úpa so that it can become a second center for Pec pod Sněžkou – and of course make money doing it.

The properties in question have belonged to Aequitas for some time, but until now the most important thing was missing – the necessary permits. Those have now finally been obtained. „We agreed with the town that we would build two doctors' offices in the building for them and give them as a gift. We've also resolved all the other requirements and now have a valid building permit,“ says the 42-year-old lawyer with visible relief.

Compared to the original optimistic assumptions, the project has in fact fallen almost two years behind schedule, during which time Langmeier and his colleagues adjusted the plans to bring them more in line with the wishes and expectations of the Pec pod Sněžkou town hall and local residents. Among other things, this led to a slight reduction in the overall volume of the complex – together with the ABM architectural studio, they removed one smaller building that had been part of the original plans.

„Rezidence Pod Portáškami will ultimately comprise 159 apartments; originally there were meant to be more than 170,“ Langmeier explains, adding that the vast majority of parking spaces will go underground, with several dozen of them offered for sale to local cottage owners and owners of the surrounding properties. The complex will also include a restaurant, a fitness and wellness area, the aforementioned doctors' offices, space for a pharmacy, and a sporting-goods shop.

As for costs, including acquisition costs, these will run to around one billion crowns. Langmeier expects construction to take place in two phases, but everything should be fully finished by 2030: „We already have two prospective partners among major Czech hotel operators interested in running the complex under what's known as the aparthotel model.“

That means individual apartments will be bought by various investors, who will then leave them under the management of a hotel chain, which will look after the residences and pay the apartment owners a fixed rent. The Svatý Vavřinec aparthotel in the nearby center of Pec pod Sněžkou operates under the same model, for example.

The developers intend to sell the apartments in Velká Úpa at „Prague“ price tags starting at 200,000 crowns per square meter, with the vast majority being smaller units, i.e. 1+kk or 2+kk layouts. „We learned from our other project, Mlýn Herlíkovice, where some of the apartments were perhaps needlessly generous in size. It's more advantageous to focus on smaller units,“ Langmeier says, referring to his first Krkonoše project near the Herlíkovice ski area in Vrchlabí.

Also thanks to pressure from the town hall, Rezidence Pod Portáškami will be exceptionally green – all the buildings will manage rainwater and greywater, they will be heated by heat pumps, solar panels will be installed on the roofs, and all parking spaces will be prepared for electric-vehicle chargers… „Of course this raises the investment costs, but from a longer-term perspective it makes sense,“ Langmeier admits.

As he leafs through a brochure with visualizations of the new look of the center of Velká Úpa in his office in Smíchov, he reaches for an iPad and virtually transports himself from the Krkonoše to the Šumava mountains: „We have another project there that we're spending a lot of time on right now.“ And he shows the Aparthotel V Ráji, a complex of four buildings in Zadov that will replace a former regional recreational chalet known as Mládí.

In his view, construction in southern Bohemia should also begin in 2026 and be finished within two to three years, though it will be a smaller project with 50 apartments and total costs of around 200 million crowns. „The selling price per square meter there will be roughly a quarter lower than in the Krkonoše,“ he adds.

As for financing, he intends to rely primarily on bank loans, which are the most advantageous. Aequitas Capital also issued a further bond issue this year, which was noted by the analytical website Dluhopisář. However, the fund uses bonds only as a small supplementary source of financing, and moreover, the interest rate on bonds is considerably higher than on bank loans.

„We also use funds from our fund's investors, but their return expectations are higher too than what a bank would lend you at,“ says the lawyer, who is known less as a developer and more as an insolvency administrator and a fighter against issuers of shady bonds. „At the moment I split my time roughly 50–50 between real estate and law,“ he laughs.

As an insolvency administrator with special authorization, he can handle the collapse of even large companies with liabilities exceeding 100 million crowns. Courts have currently, for example, assigned him the bankruptcy of the multi-billion-crown solar company Nanosun, which became one of many victims of the cooling energy market.

His office, which employs around thirty people, is also handling the insolvency of the Diversity Capital group, which collected more than two billion crowns from several thousand people and boasted, among other things, of managing funds for a Malaysian sultan. Its story was described in detail by, among others, Seznam Zprávy. In the past, Langmeier has also dealt with the debts left behind by the C2H group of the fallen „bond king“ Michal Mička, and by the Slovak Arca Investments group.

Author: Luboš Kreč

Source: https://cc.cz/…i-z-prahy-1/