Tag: OHL Desarrollos

Centro Canalejas’ Luxury Apartments Will Be Sold For c. €13,000/m2

4 November 2017 – Expansión

Centro Canalejas, located just a stone’s throw from Puerta del Sol, in the heart of Madrid, will open its doors at the beginning of 2019. It will house the first hotel to be operated by the Canadian luxury chain Four Seasons in Spain, as well as high-end homes, which will be sold for an average price of €13,000/m2. Moreover, it will include a shopping arcade on the lower floors and a 400-space parking lot.

The complex, promoted by OHL Desarrollos, Grupo Villar Mir and Mohari Limited – a company controlled by the Israeli businessman Mark Scheinberg– will unify seven historical buildings, some of which were constructed at the beginning of the nineteenth century, into a single unit, involving an investment of €525 million.

A luxury hotel operated by Four Seasons will occupy the majority of the space in the centre. Specifically, the hotel will have 200 rooms, whose surface areas will range from 45 m2 to 400 m2. They will occupy the entirety of the second, third, fourth and fifth floors, although the hotel will have a presence throughout the whole building. It will have 4,200 m2 of common areas as well as a spa, banquet halls and meeting rooms, one of which will have capacity for 600 people. Moreover, it will have two restaurants, one on the first floor, measuring 400 m2, and another on the seventh floor, measuring 425 m2.

Exclusive homes

The complex will also contain 22 exclusive homes with surface areas of between 150 m2 and 700 m2 for one of the penthouses, which will include a 350 m2 terrace. The homes, which will be located on the upper floors of the building, will be sold for an average price of €13,000 /m2.

“We have not started to market them yet. We obtained the definitive licence in July and we expect to start work in November, but several interested parties have already approached us”, explained Francisco J. Meliá, CEO of Centro Canalejas Madrid and Director General at OHL Desarrollos, the company responsible for developing the project.

Flagship development

Moreover, the centre will have a shopping arcade, measuring 15,000 m2, spread over three floors. The retail space will house luxury fashion and accessories brands, as well as gastronomic offerings.

The property developers and those responsible for the development have highlighted the architectural challenges involved in adapting the buildings to their new uses whilst respecting their heritage value and they underlined that more than €7 million has been invested in the conservation of 16,700 pieces.

“Centro Canalejas is going to be a flagship development in Madrid and not only because of its ocean liner shape”, explained the architect Carlos Lamela, Director of Estudio Lamela and author of this architectural project.

Original story: Expansión (by Artur Zanón and Rebeca Arroyo)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Four Seasons Arrives In Madrid With Suites Costing €12,000/Night

21 July 2017 – Expansión

At the beginning of 2019, when the 22 luxury homes are completed in the Canalejas Complex, the Four Seasons hotel will also open its doors. It will be the famous Canadian chain’s first establishment in Spain.

The hotel will contain 200 rooms, the smallest of which will have a minimum surface area of 45 m2 (a standard room) and the largest of which will span 400 m2 (the Presidential and Royal suites). “From the start, we were clear that the ideal brand for Madrid was Four Seasons. The city does not have any major luxury hotel operators, whereas Paris and London have 15 or 20”, explained Francisco Meliá, CEO at OHL Desarrollos.

The hotel is being designed by the team at Lamela Arquitectos (which is taking care of the entire project to restore the complex) and the US interior design studio Bamo. “Four Seasons estimate that around 65,000 people per year will visit the hotel”, said Meliá. “The brand did not have any hotels in Spain and so this is a very important milestone for it. In fact, the firm is now looking at other locations in Madrid and Marbella”, he added.

The objective of Four Seasons Canalejas will be to take advantage of the tourism that already comes to Spain, but also to attract a new luxury audience, says Meliá. “Four Seasons has a unique service culture. For example, there will be a ratio of two employees per room. Moreover, the staff receive unique training so that they never have to say no to a client”.

The rooms at the Four Seasons will be the most expensive in Madrid (currently, that record is held by the Villa Magna). “The hotel prices will range from €500 for a single room to €12,000 for a suite, per night.

In addition to the 200 rooms, the hotel will house two restaurants, an indoor swimming pool and a spa. “In the case of the restaurants, the staff serving will be employed by Four Seasons but we are talking with high-profile operators both from Spain and overseas regarding the management of the restaurant, given that the intention is for these restaurants to be set a new benchmark in the city, both for tourists and Madrilenians”, said Meliá.

Original story: Expansión (by Rocío Ruiz)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Villar Mir Seeks 40 Luxury Brands For ‘Galería de Canalejas’

19 July 2017 – Eje Prime

More than nine million people visited Madrid in 2016. Of those, 4.6 million were foreigners. The museums, Royal Palace, Retiro Park and Santiago Bernabéu were some of the most popular attractions, although the centre of the capital took the biscuit, receiving the most visitors overall. This area is also home to the most luxurious hotels in Madrid and several more are currently being built there. Nevertheless, there is no shopping area to cater for these high-end visitors and hotel guests. And that is precisely the gap that the Canalejas complex wants to fill. And if it does so, the shopping arcade could revolutionise Madrid’s high street.

After more than ten years of abandon, the group of seven buildings located at the intersection of Calles Alcalá, Sevilla and San Jerónimo promises to become a wake-up-car for retail, especially fashion, in the centre of the capital. Promoted by OHL Desarrollos and Grupo Villar Mir, Madrid’s Canalejas Centre welcomed a new shareholder in February, with the arrival of the company Mohari Limited, in which the co-founder of Poker Stars, Mark Scheinberg owns a stake. His company purchased 50% of the complex for €225 million.

A Four Seasons hotel with 200 rooms, 22 private residences associated with the hotel, a 400-space car park and the shopping arcade will comprise the complex’s four main areas. The shopping arcade, which will link Calles Alcalá and Canalejas, will be the heart of the centre and has plans to welcome more than 2 million clients every year (of the 147 million people who move in the vicinity of the centre each year).

With a select client profile, the Galería de Canalejas will comprise a commercial space with a surface area of 15,000 m2, which will be home to more than 40 fashion, cosmetic/perfume and jewellery/watch brands (on the ground and first floors) as well as a restaurant area covering more than 3,000 m2 (on the lower ground floor).

Canalejas has already started to market the space and is getting ready to sign the first agreements with some of the high-end operators, which will take receipt of their stores in November 2018 ready to open their doors in 2019, at the same time as the rest of the complex.

There are no plans for any of the large retailers (such as Zara and Uniqlo) to open stores in the complex, given that the positioning of the centre and the space requirements of such players do not tally. According to the managers of the centre, the average asking prices for the stores are below the average for the area, given that the whole zone is conditioned by Preciados, the most expensive street in Madrid for opening retail premises.

With the aim of securing around forty brands to occupy the premises, which will measure between 40 m2 and 400 m2 each, Canalejas is looking for high-end, premium firms in the fashion, jewellery and cosmetics segments (…).

Original story: Eje Prime (by P. Riaño)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Axa Buys The Cine Rex Building On Gran Vía For €42M

11 December 2015 – El Confidencial

Another high profile operation on Gran Vía. Axa Real Estate, the real estate arm of the French insurance company, has just added another property to its portfolio on the most sought-after thoroughfare in Madrid. This week, the company has reached an agreement to acquire the building that houses Hotel Rex and the historical cinemas of the same name, for €42 million.

The entity won a sales process that was launched at the start of the year by the firm Equity Inmuebles SL, controlled by the Mazon, Calero (owner of the Vincci hotels) and Briones families, which opened the bidding at around €28 million, but which, thanks to the huge appetite that exists to purchase assets on this street, has ended up selling the property for 50% more, according to comments made by several sources in the know.

This is the second operation of this kind that the French firm has closed on this thoroughfare, which last year acquired the former Avenida cinema, at number 37 Gran Vía for almost €80 million. It paid that high figure thanks to the “sweetener” afforded by having the Swedish fashion chain H&M as a tenant; it opened its most iconic store in the capital there in 2009.

For this new operation, Axa’s plans to remodel the building, which measures around 9,000 m2 and to operate it by combining its two current uses as a hotel and retail space. Moreover, the entity is willing to respect the protected nature of the cinemas, which have been closed for several years and which occupy a surface area of almost 700 m2.

Currently, the building houses a 3-star hotel with 147 rooms, managed by the owners of the property. Axa’s idea is to open a high-class establishment, which will add to the resurgence that Gran Vía is experiencing thanks to the boost that Operación Canalejas is generating in the whole area.

Hotel fever

The real estate development, which is being led by OHL Desarrollos, includes the opening of the first Four Seasons hotel in the capital. The hotel chain is proving to be a real magnet, attracting brands of high standing to the Gran Vía area. In fact, experts expect that Grupo Wanda will end up choosing a chain of such standing to manage the hotel that it will open in the Edificio España, although for the time being, the only clue is that it will be a 5-star establishment.

The majority of the new hotels being planned on this thoroughfare are 4-star and 5-star properties, such as: the one due to be opened in the building on Calle Montera, 25-27, owned by the Díaz Estrada family; Gran Vía, 10, which houses the Ministry of Education and which has been acquired by Generali for conversion into a hotel operated by Vinnci; and the Barceló, which has been opened in Torre de Madrid in Plaza de España.

Through this operation involving the Edificio Rex, Axa Real estate joins several other high profile players in the hotel business in the centre of the capital and diversifies its interests, which until now have been very concentrated in the office sector, above all after it acquired 381 Santander branches from the Socimi Uro and after it purchased the headquarters of the Generalitat de Catalunya.

Original story: El Confidencial (by Ruth Ugalde)

Translation: Carmel Drake