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Veneto: H-Campus, Cattolica and CDP launch the 100-millions real estate fund
30 November, Corriere del Veneto
The initiative to implement the buildings, managed by Banca Finint, has been launched.
H-Campus, it’s the fund that will fund the implementation of the Ca’Tron Project, concerning education, specifically in digital terms, from the kindergarten to the master, it will be already operational by September of next year. The announcement was given yesterday and technically it’s a real estate alternative investment fund (FIA), closed-end, and amounting to 101 million €, planned by Finint Investments SGR and owned by Banca Fininit, guided by Enrico Marchi.
The partners are Cattolica Assicurazioni (56%), Cassa depositi e prestiti investimenti SGR (40%), and Ca’Tron Real EState (4%), the real estate company of Riccardo Donadon, founder and president of the venture accelerator H-Farm, from which the campus project started. The activities of the fund are organized in two directions, one of which was already completed yesterday. “We have immediately acquired the four properties belonging to H-Farm – explained Filippo Jelmoni, property investments director of the Conegliano-based SGR – for a value of 32 million €. At the same time, Cattolica (owner of most of the Ca’Tron farmland, a little bigger than 1000 hectares, acquired in 2012 by Fondazione Cassamarca) gave us, for an extra 10 million, about 50 hectares. The second step will be building the remaining buildings of the Campus on that land, for an investment of about 59 million”.
The remuneration of the operation is essentially based on the lease that H-Farm has already started paying for the use of the properties sold and that will pay during the next 30 years in order to use the properties that are going to be built. The funding made available by Finint will also serve, partially, to carry out projects to adapt the viability in order to access the Campus. In particular, it concerns a connection that will make possible reaching the Campus from the motorway “Triestina”, avoiding the poorly-maintained old-roads system surrounding the Ca’Tron countryside.
The construction, which will be carried out by the Treviso-based Carron General Construction as general contractor, consists basically in the implementation of eight new buildings on an area of 26 Sq m within a 310k- Sq m-park. Here, educational and business activities, as well as leisure facilities and residences accommodating 250 students will take place. “We’d like to remind that – added Jelmoni – that the whole operation has zero cubic balance since the new volumes will be equal to the ones demolished in Ca’Tron and in the rest of the municipality of Roncade, including a military base dismissed in the eighties.
The campus has had quite a complex history and it’s supported by a planning agreement with the region of Veneto and the municipalities of Roncade and Quarto D’Altino through an administrative order by the Governor of the region, Luca Zaia. The document substantially confirmed “the regional and public characteristics of the initiative concerning the themes of education and digital culture, economic and social development, urban regeneration and landscape”.
The assessments regarding the environmental impact of the operation have been particularly challenging. The educational area, that once operative will host about 3,000 people daily, is located close to the Sile riverbank, an area that is largely below the sea level. Therefore, several simulations on the possible effects of potential floods had to be run, considering that, in 1966 the Piave and other rivers in the area overflew, flooding a large portion of the estate and now is dry thanks to a dewatering pumps system.
Source: Corriere del Veneto
Translator: Cristina