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Developer could offer €100m for Trade Mart site
Ypres-based property developer Ghelamco is reported to have bid €100 million for Trade Mart, business-to-business retail centre at the foot of the Atomium. The site is on the Heysel plateau, where the Neo shopping and leisure centre is planned, and the city of Brussels had hoped to include it in its plans for Neo.
The news was reported by L’Echo from the Mapic commercial property fair in Cannes and has not been officially confirmed. The sum quoted is far above the €65 million value placed on Trade Mart by its co-owner, Brussels-based AG Real Estate, which owns the property 50-50 with Texas-based Crow Holdings.
The complex, covering 200,000 square metres and one of the largest in the world when it opened in 1975, is ideally placed to form the centre of the Neo project, but the inflated offer from Ghelamco is likely to change the city’s plans. A stone’s throw away, Ghelamco is working with the city on the project for a new national sports stadium at Parking C.
The Trade Mart complex is home to some 550 distributors of fashion and homewares, attracting 200,000 retailers a year, according to AG Real Estate. It also houses the Atomium’s Art & Design Museum, which opened a year ago. Ghelamco’s plans for the space are not yet known.
Photo courtesy AG Real Estate
Comments
"A stone’s throw away, Ghelamco is working with the city on the project for a new national sports stadium at Parking C."
Well, a football stadium rather.
It is already known that the athletics track is not foreseen in the new object. Currently Roi Baudouin stadium hosts number of athletics events including the Diamond League finals - Van Damme's memorial. That won't be possible anymore in the future. As far as I know the track itself is planned in the Neo centre. However without the tribunes of a stadium, that would be good for local events, not for international or massive ones like Brussels Ekiden or said Diamond League.