The administrator of the Stop condominium in Porto told Lusa this Thursday that the owner of the hotel company IME, the manager of Eurostars Heroísmo and the owner of the land behind this shopping center, has shown interest in the space but has not submitted proposals.
“In this hotel [Eurostars Heroísmo] I said they were interested. I have spoken many times. I have a great relationship with them, I gave them an idea of what it was, they even went there with an architect and I showed them all the fractions,” he told Lusa Ferreira da Silva today.
According to the administrator of the Stop condominium, “they always said they were interested, but they never offered one euro or one million.”
Asked if he had contacted Aderitu Oliveira, President of IME – Imóveis e Empreendimentos Hoteleiros, Ferreira da Silva confirmed that “the engineer was an extremely correct person”.
“He always showed interest, he owns [terreno] behind, showed interest in it [no Stop]but nothing has been achieved,” he assured, saying he had “a great relationship with him” but never “no contact in the sense of ‘let’s buy, what price, under what conditions, we can contact the owners'”.
According to Ferreira da Silva, these were “preliminary” contacts, and, as far as Stop is concerned, “to say that there are real estate interests is a lie” at present.
“I mean, they might be now, but they never were before,” he told Luce.
Lusa has asked IME – Imóveis e Empreendimentos Hoteleiros about contacting the stop manager and about the development behind a shopping center called Quarteirão da Oficina do Ferro and is awaiting a response.
On Tuesday, more than a hundred shops in the Stop shopping center on Rua do Heroismo in Porto were sealed off by the municipal police “due to a lack of operating licenses”, as justified by the city council, leaving nearly 500 artists and shop owners with “nowhere to go”, according to the Stop Musicians Association.
In addition to the Eurostars Heroísmo in this area, IME has already held a design competition in partnership with the Order of Architects – Northern Regional Section for the rear block, which will allow “to reflect on the best conceptual basis for possible future investments in this area”.
“From a programmatic point of view, the intention is to design a hotel, tourist apartments and affordable housing,” one can read in the competition program available on the “website” dedicated to the competition.
According to the applications that Lusa has reviewed, the intervention zone does not include the Stop shopping center, but one of the entrances to the development will be made in a neighboring building, where there is already a gate leading to the block in question.
On Tuesday, the administrator of the Stop condominium said the mall could not be sold in its entirety because the property is being shared between the shop owners, requiring everyone’s consent.
On Wednesday, Porto Mayor Rui Moreira assured that he would not authorize the construction of “any hotel” on the site of the Stop shopping center and that the purchase of the building by the municipality was not possible, which he reiterated today.
In a conversation with Lusa, Ferreira da Silva also disputed that the mayor of Porto, Rui Moreira, referred to himself as “the one who calls himself a condominium administrator”.
“The administrator is elected by the protocol, which I can show, by the protocol of the assembly that elected him,” said Luce Ferreira da Silva.
The administrator also stated that it was “a lie” that the Chamber was trying to buy or lease the stop.
Author: Portuguese
Source: CM Jornal
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