Hotel Kyjev. (source: SME - Marko Erd)
After years of debates and speculation, the Lordship development group has chosen the path it wants to take in regards to the Hotel Kyjev in Bratislava's centre. Neither a significant reconstruction nor change of the facade of the well-known hotel is planned.
"At the beginning, the idea was to drastically transform the building, but that is no longer the case," says Rostislav Novák, executive director of Lordship, in an interview with the Index magazine.
Now, the group only wants to renovate the hotel. However, even these plans have run into problems. Preservationists have suggested declaring the hotel and the adjacent department store a national cultural monument.
The developer says that it has found itself in a deadlock situation. "All we know is that in extreme cases the decision can be interpreted in such a way that we have to restore everything to its original condition," says Novák.
In 2018, the results of the conceptual architectural tender for the new look of the Hotel Kyjev were published. Five years have passed and it still looks the same on the outside. What have you been doing throughout that time?
When an ordinary person looks at the building, it might seem like nothing happened. Inside, we worked based on the results of the tender, but after some time we concluded that the path we were following was not a good one.
Subsequently, we came up with the idea of how to return the building to the almost similar function it once served from the beginning; short- and medium-term accommodation. We wanted to offer accommodation for students, young couples, business travellers and tourists. It should have been the universal concept of a modern accommodation in the city centre. We looked for inspiration in other projects across Europe.
However, during the project's implementation, we were first slowed down by the pandemic, then the impact of the war in Ukraine. As a result of the latter, the situation on the financial market fundamentally changed. Since then, our direction has become clearer.
According to the original concept, you planned on building a new office building. Are you still planning on doing so?
No. The idea of a multifunctional building with a predominance of office and commercial space has been abandoned. At the moment we are focusing on the co-living concept. Offices may eventually appear in the hotel, but only as additional areas in the order of hundreds of square metres.
A fundamental turn
Should the appearance of Hotel Kyjev change?
