witeku":1hi9233m je napisao(la):
I would like to get the things with Prokop station straight. Am I correct?
In the 1990s and 2000s there was a proposal to construct the station in public-private partnership (PPP), but the contractor had bigger and bigger demands. The agreement was broken and ZS signed an agreement with a second company - Energoprojekt. But the country governement didn't agree with handing over the grounds over the Prokop station to private investor. Finally it was agreed that the state will pay Energoprojekt for completion of works at the station and Beograd city will build the connection roads (and the business and trade complex will be another stage). And now it turns out that the state doesn't have enough funds for finishing the works at the station and that is why a Russian loan is taken under consideration? Did I get it correctly?
Well this is what is written in the Serbian wikipedia article about it more or less, so let's assume it's true
I don't know about 1990s. There were plans then for lots of things then, but few things got done, obviously. There was apparently a contract with Energoprojekt (but not PPP-type, just a contract to build the station) from 1996.
The agreement about PPP which you refer was from 2005 with Hungarian company Trigranit. That is, Trigranit won the tender called by ZS, which called for station construction by the winner of the tender, who would in return get the right to build the shopping mall/office space on top, but in the end to contract was not signed due to those extra&unreasonable demands, whatever they were. Then in 2008 the contract for the same thing was signed with Energoprojekt, and you are right the government did not approve it, because there was no legal basis (apparently) to make Energoprojekt the owner of the station roof and everything that would be built on top; they could only lease it, not own it. Anyways that is the official reason. I think there was lots of political lobbying behind the scenes for one reason or another. You are right about the new agreement, with costs shared between the national government and the city government.
Now, if you ask me (and a lot of other people), the problem with Prokop since 2000 is not really about lack of funds, but about something else. I mean, the estimate for making Prokop fully functional is 80 million euros. Some other things need to be finished in the Belgrade railway junction, but I think the total cost for making it fully functional is less than 200 million euros. That is the money Belgrade will spend on the Ada bridge (not counting interest on the loans)...and the existing parts of the junction already cost more than 2 billion dollars.
The thing is, once Prokop is finished, the old railway station can be put out of use - and not just the station itself, but more importantly all the railway infrastructure around it which occupies so much prime real estate along the Sava river. This in fact, is the main point of Prokop - to free up all this space basically in the middle of the city for development. But the question is - who profits from selling this land once it is cleared? ZS? The national government? The city government? I believe there are people in each of those three who do not see much interest in continuing with Prokop until they figure out who will get the money. My other, more conspirational
theory, is that in the 2000s some tycoons also lobbied to delay the project, because it would impact the price of real estate in the city (in which they were heavily invested in). For example, the two biggest Serbian tycoons together bought the Belgrade Port (Luka Beograd), with plans to relocate it (it too is in a basically silly location too close to the city centre) downstream and then redevelop the area as a business/residential complex. For them, a freed up large area around the railway station would be unwelcome competition.