The impressive seven-story palace of the former Skloexport, which stands on a lucrative plot of land directly opposite the main railway station in Liberec, can be acquired by Liberec. It is being offered to the city by the Office for State Representation in Property Matters (ÚZSVM), which owns the building, which has been abandoned since 2009.
Liberec was still intensely interested in the massive building in 2020 but sought a gratis transfer. The state is now offering the building for almost CZK 67 million.
The ÚZSVM expects the city’s reaction by the end of January. “The city council has already dealt with the offer. We have only taken note of it, we have. Wet adopted any resolution on it. Of course, each of the councilors has a position on it. I think it is not a political matter, but an economic one,” said Liberec Mayor Jaroslav Zámečník (SLK), adding that the Liberec City Council will discuss the state’s offer next week on Thursday.
The building is conveniently located near the train and bus stations, which will undergo a significant transformation in the coming years. “The building would also be suitable for the performance of the so-called delegated competencies of the state administration for 28 surrounding municipalities, including Liberec, such as issuing ID cards, dealing with offenses, the social department or the construction office. Citizens traveling from Hrádek, Hodkovice, or Český Dub would not have to go to the city center and would be able to do everything near the station,” the mayor explained some time ago.
The Glass Export headquarters were built in 1928-1930 and were the most significant state contract in interwar Liberec. From the beginning, the building’s appearance was to be monumental and representative, as it was to declare the strong position of the government of the young Czechoslovak Republic in the German city. Skloexport, for many years the largest Czech glass exporter, had its headquarters in the building for 40 years. However, in the second half of the 1990s, the company ran into substantial financial difficulties that collapsed.