Vondel Capital leaves Serbia - Aleksandar Gradnja takes over Park City complex in Novi Sad

Dutch Vondel Capital is going to leave Serbia and, as people in this company point out, it will sign an agreement on takeover with some other investor in next two or three days, so that all information related to this deal will be available on Monday. As daily Dnevnik learns, Vondel Capital will leave Park City complex in Novi Sad's Liman 3 to Aleksandar Gradnja, and the reason for that is, among the rest, the fact that the Dutch company has a debt of 35 million euros and a blocked account.

- Negotiations between the bank and the two companies are now in final phase - Vladimir Gogoljev, Vondel's representative for Serbia, told Dnevnik and added that Novi Sad-based Aleksandar Gradnja should officially become the owner of that luxury residential and business complex in Novi Sad next week.

- The biggest problem in this story is the bank and everything started to go downhill when the bank that granted us the loan began changing the terms of crediting with the emergence of the crisis. Namely, it reduced the loan's volume and tripled the initial interest rate, which forced us to finance remaining works on the complex from the sale of apartments and outlets. All that slowed us down and resulted in broken deadlines – Gogoljev explains.

However, he points out that buyers will not be damaged and that suppliers are now owed about 2-3% of total amount of money, that is, less than EUR 1m, which is nothing when we know that the whole project is worth about 45 million euros.

- Apartments are, mainly, finished, and buyers have no reason for fear. The building is almost 100% completed. There are only fine works left to be done in several apartments, while most of them are, practically, ready for tenants – said Dnevnik's interlocutor.

Upon the handover, Aleksandar Gradnja should sell remaining apartments, while certain contractors to whom Vondel owes will get office space in the complex.

By the way, Park City was supposed to be finished and ready for tenants in October 2009, while the value of works on the complex, which comprises four buildings, amounted to 45 million euros. In some earlier statements for Dnevnik, people in this company said that building A, that is, the building closest to the Municipality of Liman, had been completely sold and that there would be no tenants in it. Earlier plan was that the complex includes Slovenian Tus, German DM, German restaurant chain with Italian cuisine Vapiano, Novi Sad's Makiato cafe, and many others. It was said on that occasion that building A had been bought by Novi Sad-based company DMS and that hi-tech company Micronas from Novi Sad had purchased half of building B.

The building complex, symbolically named Park City, with the surface of over 60,000 square meters, includes 280 apartments and luxury suites whose size ranges between 30 and 420 square meters, as well as an underground garage with about 400 parking places. Certain apartments, of which price per square meter goes as high as EUR 2,200, have their own swimming pools, "invisible" air-conditioners, elevators that lead directly to apartments and move at the speed of three meters per second, and programmable light system. The land on this parcel has been rented for the period of 80 years at the price of about 500 million dinars.