Coimbra Chamber wants to buy Metro Mondego offices

A Câmara de Coimbra wants to move forward with a demonstration of interest in the purchase of offices of the Metro Mondego bridge building, next to the Paços do Conselho, for about 1.4 million euros.

At the meeting of the executive of Monday, a proposal for the acquisition of four fractions of the bridge-building, located above the so-called central road, in the Baixa de Coimbra, created thinking about the passage of the section of the ‘metrobus’ (articulated bus on dedicated road) will be examined and voted.

According to the document to which the agency Lusa had access, the Chamber of Coimbra intends to pay EUR 1,439 million for three office spaces (situated on the first, second and third floors) and a commercial space on the ground floor, belonging to Metro Mondego, which has already expressed a desire to alienate those same spaces.

The proposal aims to authorize the House of Coimbra to continue the diligence with Metro Mondego, “communicating the interest of the municipality in the acquisition of the fractions, without this communication constituting a final decision to acquire or assume the contractual position of the undertaking”, can be read in the proposal that will be discussed.

Each of the three office spaces has a private area of 175 square meters each. The trading space on the ground floor has an area of 75 square meters.

In the proposal, it is understood that Metro Mondego must, on a date prior to the transfer of the contractual position of that building, regularize the charges, responsibilities “and previous contingencies, and cannot be transmitted to the municipality not identified or not considered in the sensitivity analysis”.

In the document to which the Lusa agency had access, the municipality stated that it carried out an independent evaluation in July, which concluded that the fractions would have a value of 1.6 million euros, if the works were completed, but that, in view of the physical state of the property and the degree of execution of the undertaking, it placed the evaluation of the four fractions in a total of 1,136 million euros.

Subsequently, technical elements were made available that estimated a cost of 175 thousand euros in remaining works in that building, as well as the possibility of the municipality taking the contractual position of the undertaking.

The proposed value of EUR 1,439 million “is supported in a revised assessment report and complemented by an assessment expert registered in the CVM, which took into account additional technical information relating to the project, which was not available at the time of the initial assessment promoted by the municipality”, he concluded.

In June, the Coimbra Chamber had stated that it had advanced with a proposal of one million euros to buy the bridge building of Metro Mondego, to install municipal services there.

At an executive meeting at the time, the councilman with the portfolio of municipal finance and equipment, Luís Filipe, said that the municipality had already reserved one million euros for this purpose.

At the time, Luís Filipe stated that the acquisition, to be made, would be carried out using the municipality's own revenue.

The councilman justified this decision instead of buying a building for rehabilitation because this option could take two or three years, which would not be “compatible” with the executive’s aim in the short term to improve the conditions of the employees’ workplace.