Tag: Wanda Metropolitano

Atlético de Madrid Expects to Close the Sale of the Calderón Plots in Early 2019

20 November 2018 – Eje Prime

Atlético de Madrid is proof of the importance that property can have when it comes to financing activity. The football club has decided to take out a mortgage backed by the Wanda Metropolitano stadium to secure its €200 million refinancing with Inbursa, the financial entity controlled by Carlos Slim, according to reports from Palco 23. The intention of the Board of Directors is to convert that debt into a long-term liability and obtain better conditions than those signed when the financing plan for the new stadium was modified. In parallel, the club is preparing the sale of the plots of land on the site of the Vicente Calderón, scheduled for the beginning of 2019.

The €200 million refinancing plan and the sale of the plots alongside the Manzanares River are closely linked. Two years ago, the Mexican bank offered the financing necessary to finish the building work at the Wanda Metropolitano, after FCC, the construction group that it also controls, refused to charge for its service through the delivery of units for urban development at the Vicente Calderón.

The contract allowed the parties to cancel the loan with the sale of the plot or with the payment of annual instalments for four seasons, which made the repayment of the loan very short term, in the middle of the expansion of the sports area. In the end, the club has committed to extend the term and so the liquidity injection that will result from the sale of the Calderón will not be used to repay the debt, but rather to make more resources available for the club’s daily operations, as well as for new projects and to access to the transfer market,  if necessary.

Sources at the club indicate that the second real estate operation will probably not be signed until next year, after the municipal government of Madrid failed to provide its definitive approval of the urban planning project until last week. “We think that the uses will be converted into plots and registered in the name of the club at the beginning of 2019, which is when we will proceed with the sale”, they said.

Obtaining all of the permits is the guarantee that the property developers will be able to undertake their projects without any problems. The definitive plan establishes 33,339 m2 for residential use, with a buildability of 132,344 m2; of that capacity, 13,234 m2 in total will be reserved for social housing properties. Tertiary use land will span 14,705 m2, with 13,893 m2 for public amenities and just over 73,000 m2 for green space and others.

The new owners will have to assume the urbanisation costs of €42.22 million, including the €22 million required for the demolition of the former Atléti stadium, without affecting the M-30 road, which passes under one of the stands. It is unknown whether the football club and the Mahou brewery or the future owners will assume that price, and what impact that will have on the final sales price (…).

Original story: Eje Prime (by M. Menchen)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Madrid’s Town Hall to Approve the Mahou-Calderón Project

18 July 2018 – Eje Prime

The Mahou-Calderón project is pushing ahead. Tomorrow (Thursday), the Town Hall of Madrid is going to approve the urban development plan for the land, one of the most sought-after plots in the Spanish capital. The roadmap for the site, which is still home to the Vicente Calderón stadium, the historical home of Atlético de Madrid, means that the construction work will begin after the summer and will be scheduled for completion within three years.

After the summer, Atlético de Madrid and Mahou, the owners of the batch of land, hope that the period of public consultation will be completed so that they can start to demolish the stadium, according to El Confidencial.

The building work will be divided into three phases, starting with the demolition of the Calderón. Next, and after modifying the traffic flow that passes under the pitch, the roads between Paseo de los Pontones, Paseo Imperial and Paseo de los Melancólicos are going to be urbanised.

The first phase of the project is also going to be the most expensive, with an investment of €22.7 million, half of the total budget established (€42.2 million) for this ambitious urban development plan. The Government of Madrid is going to contribute another €60 million to cover over the road.

The finalists: Solvia, Ibosa and Princeton 

Waiting to see what happens tomorrow in the Town Hall are Solvia, Ibosa and Princeton, the three finalist investors looking to buy the plots, which will expand Madrid’s residential stock by another 33,339 m2 of buildable land, located on a plot with a buildable surface area of 132,344 m2.

The objective of Atlético de Madrid with this project is to raise up to €200 million from the sale operation. The club is planning to use that extraordinary capital to repay Carlos Slim the €160 million loan that he granted the sporting entity to complete the building work on its current stadium, the Wanda Metropolitano.

Original story: Eje Prime 

Translation: Carmel Drake

Aelca, Ibosa, Amenabar, Pryconsa, Libra & Princeton Compete For Calderón Plots

18 November 2017 – El Economista

Atlético de Madrid has already received its first offers from investors interested in acquiring the plots of land adjacent to the Vicente Calderón stadium. The sale represents the largest land operation currently underway in the centre of Madrid and the football club is taking advantage of that fact to try to find a buyer willing to pay double the current prices in the area.

According to several sources in the sector, the companies that have bid to acquire these plots of land include the property developer Aelca, in which Värde holds a stake. It is the only one of the four large real estate companies still in the process, given that Neinor, Aedas and Vía Célere have all ruled out participating in the operation, due to its high price.

The same sources state that Grupo Ibosa is another one of the firms that is pushing ahead with the purchase process; and it is doing so with the backing of a fund. Similarly, the property developers Amenabar and Pryconsa have also submitted bids, as has the cooperative manager Libra Gestión.

The British family office Princeton is another name that appears on the list of investors interested in the Calderdón. That firm arrived in Spain at the beginning of 2015 and since then has closed several residential operations as well as a handful of others of a tertiary nature.

CBRE, which is advising the operation, will receive the binding offers at the end of November, with the aim of trying to close the sale before the end of the year. Atlético de Madrid wants to repay Carlos Slim on time for the more than €160 million that he loaned the Club, through the company Inbursa, to finance the works on the new stadium, Wanda Metropolitano.

The land up for sale is divided into three plots (RC-4, RC-7 and RC-8) and together cover more than 63,000 m2. The largest space corresponds to private residential use and the rest to tertiary use. The amount that Atlético de Madrid expects to receive for this operation, according to real estate sources in the know, comes to €200 million, which places the price per square metre in a very high range, of around €3,300/m2. In this way, the c. 480 homes that will be constructed on the site, will have to be sold for around €6,000/m2 if the operation is to be profitable for the buyer. It is precisely these figures that have deterred the large listed real estate companies, as well as those that have financial backing from funds, given that they must fulfil the returns they have promised to their shareholders and investors in every operation.

First obstacles

Although the project known as Mahou-Calderón, which encompasses the sale of these plots, has already received provisional approval from the Town Hall of Madrid, it is still awaiting definitive approval from the Community of Madrid’s Urban Planning Committee, which has four months to analyse the one-off amendment to the PGOU, and the Community of Madrid’s Governing Council, according to José Manuel Calvo, a Councillor for the Town Hall of Madrid, in an interview for the El Economista’s Inmobiliaria magazine.

Nevertheless, on Wednesday, it was revealed that the Ministry for the Environment and Land Planning had identified a “calculation error” in the buildability coefficients, and has urged the municipal technicians to correct the errors in order “to prevent the operation from being susceptible to being challenged in the courts in the future”, said sources from the Ministry to EP.

Original story: El Economista (by Alba Brualla)

Translation: Carmel Drake