Barcelona’s Torre Agbar won’t become a hotel

The Agbar Tower won’t become the Barcelona Hyatt hotel. Emin Capital, the promoters behind the project up until yesterday, together with their partners, largely consisting of Westmont Hospitality Group Best Hotel Properties and Bestford Capital (a Singapore-based family wealth management firm), have decided not to turn the building into a hotel and instead have sold it to a real estate investment trust (REIT) Merlin Properties, for €142 million. Yesterday Merlin announced that it will convert the building into rented office space.

The attempt to turn the landmark building into a hotel lasted two years. But yesterday Emin and its partners offered a bitter account of their decision to renounce, following the treatment they received at the hands of Barcelona’s City Council. The turnaround resulted from "complications regarding the implementation of the plan", Emin declared in a statement, which went on to claim that the complications began when the project was "erroneously" included in a Council moratorium on new hotels introduced by Mayor Ada Colau. In addition, Emin stated that it had engaged in a lengthy process "that so far has not led to obtaining a hotel licence for dual usage as a hotel and observation deck".

The council swiftly denied any responsibility for the promoter’s decision to drop its plans for a hotel. According to a council source, they received official written notification of the promoters’ decision yesterday. The source indicated that "it is strictly the promoter’s decision, as they could have gone ahead with obtaining the hotel licence since they have an urban development permit".

Emin and its partners bought the building in the spring of 2014 and announced that they would convert it into a hotel once Agbar moved to its new headquarters, in a project that was greeted positively by the then mayor Xavier Trias. The following year Ada Colau became mayor, and in July 2015 declared a moratorium on new hotels. Although at first it seemed as if it were not possible to convert the Agbar Tower into a hotel, the fact that Emin had an urban development permit meant they were unaffected by the moratorium and they could proceed with the project.

Yesterday the hotel’s promoters complained that two and a half years after buying the building they had still not obtained the licence, whereas council sources indicated that up until the present the council had been reviewing the permit and ensuring that it conformed to the current regulations and the law, as with any other project. CiU councillor Jordi Martí took the opportunity to criticize Ada Colau’s administration for having sent a message to the world that the Catalan capital "does not welcome international capital investments with high added value".

Lower price

Merlin, the REIT headed by Ismael Clemente, notified Spain’s National Securities Market Commission (CNMV) that they had acquired the property for €142 million. It is a lower figure than the €150 million that Emin and its partners had initially agreed to pay, and less than the €165 million that Agbar paid Azurelau, the company owned by Antoni Vila Casas and Santiago Oller, the building’s previous owners.

Yesterday Merlin stated that it will invest 15 million euros in renovating the building to turn it into multioccupancy office space; in other words it will be rented out to more than one company. The building occupies 51,485 square metres, of which 37,014 square metres are above ground and includes an auditorium for 350 people and a four-storey underground car park which can hold up to 300 vehicles. At 142 meters high, the Torre Agbar, located on Avinguda Diagonal off Plaça de Les Glòries, is the third tallest building in Barcelona and sits right on the edge of the 22@ district. It was designed by the architects Jean Nouvel and Fermín Vázquez and was completed in 2005.

Sales of homes grew by more than 20% in Catalonia up to November

The total number of residential properties sold in Catalonia last November stood at 5,476, representing an increase of 18.9% compared to the same month last year, according to figures published yesterday by the National Institute of Statistics. Between January and November 2016, a total of 61,377 residential properties were sold in Catalonia, a figure 20.5% higher than the 50,917 for the same period in 2015.

Although the figures show signs of a recovery in the residential property market, the number of homes sold between January and November 2016 is still far from the total for 2007, when almost 106,000 homes were sold in Catalonia over the same period.

The figure for 2016 is the highest for the month of November since 2007, before the housing bubble burst, when 6,755 apartments were sold. The growth in sales is still dominated by the second-hand housing market, which in November accounted for 87.9% of total sales.