Tag: Wanda Metropolitan

Madrid’s Town Hall Definitively Approves the Mahou-Calderón Development

15 November 2018 – El Confidencial

The final piece of the puzzle has fallen into place. The Governing Board of the Town Hall of Madrid has definitively approved the urbanisation plans for the Mahou-Calderón project after the corresponding period of public consultation came to an end on Thursday. This means that the owners of the land can now start work. The plenary of the Town Hall will ratify the final project over the coming weeks, although the claims phase is not, in theory, expected to alter the plan initially approved in July: it involves a budget of €42.2 million, will see the transformation of 193,804 m2 of land in total and will be executed in three phases in just under three years. The first phase will involve the demolition of the stadium.

The demolition of the Atlético de Madrid’s temple, an operation that will cost €22.4 million, will be the first piece of work to be carried out, with the exception of the stand located above the M-30, which will remain in place to interfere as little as possible with the traffic on that road. Subsequently, the traffic from the motorway ring-road will be diverted so that the stand can be demolished. The first stage will also include the urbanisation of the roads between Paseo de los Pontones, Paseo Imperial and Paseo de los Melancólicos.

Once those first projects have been concluded, phase 2 will begin, which will see the reorganisation of Paseo de los Melancólicos and Calle Duque de Tovar, with a budget of €7.7 million. Finally, the third phase, with a final budget of more than €12 million, will include the creation of a new park by the river, which, in any case, will come after Calle-30 has been covered over, by the Town Hall. Specifically, the Town Hall has committed to providing €60 million to finance the work to cover over that road, a budget that is separate from the urbanisation project that has been approved today because it was agreed that it would be processed independently.

The Governing Board chaired by Manuela Carmena gave the final green light to this project today, which is going to be financed by the Compensation Board that comprises the landowners (Atlético and Mahou). The surface area of the space is broken down into two sections, one of which is dedicated to residential and tertiary use, and the other to roads, green areas and basic amenities.

The land dedicated to residential use occupies 33,339 m2 (with a buildability of 132,344 m2) of which 13,243 m2 will be for social housing properties, which represents more than 11% of the total. Meanwhile, tertiary use land will have a buildability of 14,705 m2. Finally, the land dedicated to social uses will span 13,893 m2 for public amenities. In addition, 73,099 m2 will be dedicated to green space and 73,469 m2 to roads .

In any case, this final procedure paves the way for the construction work to begin and for one of the major urban planning operations in the city to be unblocked. It has been in the hands of the Department for Sustainable Urban Development, led by José Manuel Calvo. As this newspaper published in the summer, the initial approval of the plan – which today received definitive approval – was a key step for the plans of Atlético de Madrid. The football club suspended the process to sell its urban planning rights in January, as it was waiting to be able to offer the three interested finalists – Solvia, Ibosa and Princeton – a series of guarantees, including the reparcelation and urbanisation project, amongst others.

With the sale of its urban planning rights, Atlético de Madrid is hoping to raise almost €200 million, an amount that it is hoping to use to repay the Mexican businessman Carlos Slim for the €160 million loan that he granted  to Enrique Cerezo’s club to finance the completion of the construction of the new stadium, the Wanda Metropolitano (…).

Original story: El Confidencial (by Paloma Esteban)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Atlético De Madrid Wants To Sell Operación Calderón Land For €3,300/m2

10 November 2017 – Cinco Días

Atlético de Madrid is looking to shake up the real estate sector with a record-breaking operation. The club is heating up the housing market with an operation to sell the plots on the site of its former Vicente Calderón stadium, through which it wants to achieve much higher prices than are currently being paid for land in the surrounding area.

The club, chaired by Enrique Cerezo and controlled by Miguel Ángel Gil, has engaged the consultancy firm CBRE to sell the plots of land, and the first round of offers have already been received. Atlético has already been sounding out potential buyers regarding a land asking price of €3,300/m2, according to four companies in the real estate sector, which would represent a record in this part of the Spanish capital.

That high land value would mean that the houses built on the site would have to be sold for approximately €6,000/m2, according to the calculations performed by several sources. That figure is equivalent to other more expensive areas in the capital and represents almost twice the current sales price of new build homes in the district of Arganzuela, where the stadium is located. According to the appraisal company Tinsa, new homes in this neighbourhood are currently being sold for prices ranging between €3,000/m2 and €4,000/m2, based on data as at 2017.

Specifically, Atlético is selling three plots of land, which have a total surface area of 63,076 m2, of which 57,094 m2 corresponds to residential use and the remaining 5,892 m2 to commercial use. Around 500 homes are expected to be built on the site. If the club manages to find a buyer willing to pay €3,300/m2, it will receive proceeds of €210 million. If the price ends up being €3,000/m2, the purchaser will have to spend around €190 million.

This urban planning operation is linked to the club’s change of stadium after it moved this season from its former pitch next to the Manzanares River to the new Wanda Metropolitan (…). Moreover, the football team needs to sell these plots to repay Inbursa – owned by the magnate Carlos Slim – for a €160 million loan that it was granted to build its new stadium.

The so-called Operación Mahou-Calderón, which also includes the adjacent plots on the site of the former brewery headquarters- but which are not included in the sale now being undertaken by Atlético – was approved by the municipal plenary in September. The buildability of that environment has decreased from 175,000 m2 to 147,000 m2 with respect to Ana Botella’s plan dated 2014.

Sources in the sector explain that CBRE has already received at least five offers during the first phase of the process, which is expected to close at the beginning of 2018. For the time being, it is not known whether any of these bids exceeds the figure of €3,000/m2 that Atleti is looking for (…).

Sources at the real estate consultancy firm Knight Frank calculate that the price of land in this neighbourhood amounts to a maximum of between €2,400/m2 and €2,800/m2. They explain that recent similar purchases in the district of Arganzuela, in the Méndez Álvaro area, for example, were closed for a price of between €2,000/m2 and €2,220/m2.

However, some experts in the residential market do believe that the €3,000/m2 threshold may be broken due to the high purchase pressure currently in play, primarily due to interest from international funds. They also consider that these plots are very attractive, located as they are in the Madrid Río area, and so they expect the degree of interest in them to be high.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the river, in the Usera area, Neinor Homes is marketing quite an exclusive development called Riverside at prices that exceed €4,000/m2, according to the portal Fotocasa, and the penthouses are going for €6,000/m2.

Original story: Cinco Días (by Alfonso Simón Ruiz)

Translation: Carmel Drake