Collboni allies with the Zona Franca Consortium to save the abandoned shopping center in the Vila Olímpica

BarcelonaThe abandoned shopping centre in the Vila Olímpica is seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Barcelona City Council has finally found an ally in the Zona Franca Consortium to put an end to the uncertainty of this key space in the neighbourhood that has been deteriorating for years. According to various sources who have spoken to ARA, the Consortium has pledged to open talks with Mercasa –the state-owned company that manages the centre– to acquire the centre. The decision is only pending approval from the Zona Franca plenary council, which is being held this midday.

The details of the agreement will be offered in a subsequent press conference by the mayor, Jaume Collboni, and the president of the Consortium, Pere Navarro, but the various sources consulted explain that the alliance will go further. The agreement will also include a commitment from the Consortium to study the acquisition of other critical facilities along the city's Waterfront. This concerns the Moda Shopping complex –just below the Mapfre Tower– and the leisure premises on the Barceloneta promenade that were left out of the auction held by the State in 2020.

The most advanced process, however, is that of the Centre de la Vila. In this case, the Consortium is indeed committing to the City Council to begin talks with Mercasa to acquire the centre. In exchange, according to the sources, the council is committing to accompany the Consortium throughout the process of redefining the space, in resolving the conflicts that the centre is dragging on –with a significant dispute regarding the car park– and also in studying the implementation of municipal facilities in part of the complex.

Now, therefore, negotiations will open between the Consortium and Mercasa, which in June saw the public auction for the Centre de la Vila for a minimum price of 18.5 million euros end with no bids. If the talks prosper, a soap opera that has lasted for more than five years will come to an end. In 2021, the City Council, then governed by Ada Colau, began negotiations with the owner of the shopping centre after ERC forced it to reserve funds to buy it in exchange for approving the budget.

In this term, it has been the Councillor for Economy, Jordi Valls, who has been in charge of trying to find a solution for the space, which has been dragging on for years of disinvestment and abandonment. Mercasa has neglected the Centre de la Vila for years, to the point that for five years the centre has not had a manager or a maintenance director. The last official figure stated that only 35 of the 83 premises are occupied, but the number today is even lower. Taking a walk through the centre, it is clearly seen how the empty premises with signs announcing that the space is available are the vast majority.

One of the keys if the Consorci de la Zona Franca finally buys the Centre de la Vila will be to carry out its rehabilitation. Mercasa itself admitted in the documentation attached to the auction the poor state of part of the facilities, with underground water leaks in several points of the building; cracks and fissures due to “lack of adequate maintenance”, and technical and safety deficiencies in the high-voltage installation.

After ARA published the news, the ERC mayoral candidate, Elisenda Alamany, has claimed the work done by the Republicans since 2021 for the city to recover the Centre de la Vila. “Barcelona needs to recover spaces for its neighbours and protect neighbourhood life,” she said, and asked that the centre be converted into a facility for the neighbourhood.

A shake-up of the Waterfront

The other leg of the agreement that will be presented this Thursday is in a more embryonic phase, but it could mean a major shake-up for the city's Waterfront. In this case, the Consorci de la Zona Franca has committed to the City Council to study the feasibility of also acquiring the Moda Shopping shopping center, right below the Torre Mapfre and next to the renovated Olympic Port. This complex, owned for seven years by the State Heritage –which depends on the Ministry of Finance–, had also been dragging on problems for some time.

In 2019, the administrative concession under which the center's businesses operated expired; the center was inaugurated in 1993 and also includes a parking lot with over a hundred spaces. Despite the attempts of the twelve establishments that were operating in the complex at that time, the State refused to renew their lease with the goal of auctioning off the empty property. During these seven years, merchants and the Spanish government have maintained a tough legal standoff that ended in victory for the State and a trickle of evictions that have given the center an image of abandonment.

Now the Consorci de la Zona Franca is opening the door, hand in hand with the City Council, to find a solution for this space. And also for the entertainment venues of the Waterfront –the nightclubs located next to the Hotel Arts– that in 2020 were left out of the major auction that the Ministry of Finance held for the area. These are the premises where the Opium, Shoko, Carpe Diem, Agua, and Ice Bar nightclubs are located.