EUR 40 M Office Complex, Hilton Garden Inn to Be Built in Sofia

A new office complex with a Hilton Garden Inn hotel will be opened in Bulgaria’s capital Sofia in the third quarter of 2011, according to reports.

About EUR 40 M will be invested in the BLU Offices & Hilton Garden Inn complex, reported Bulgarian business news site investor.bg citing IHM OOD, the investor in the new development.

The new office and hotel complex will be located on the Brussels Blvd very close to the Sofia International Airport. The first Hilton Garden Inn-branded hotel in Bulgaria will have 200 rooms.

The offices will be located in two 65-meter-high towers (16 storeys each), with a total of 20 000 square meters of office space; the entire complex will have a built-up area of 50 000 square meters.

The funding for the investment is provided by Erste Group Immorent (EGI). According to Yani Stoimenov cited as a consultant to the project, the funding is under favorable interest rates, and allows the investors to offer offices at very attractive prices, possibly with zero rent for the first one or two years. In his words, for the next 5-10 years, however, the offices in the complex will cost EUR 8 per square meter per month.

The Bulgarian capital Sofia already has a Hilton Hotel, the Hilton Sofia, in its downtown; a Doubletree by Hilton hotel was opened in the Golden Sands resorts in the summer of 2010 to be followed by the Hilton Varna in the summer of 2011.

If the new investment in Sofia is realized, the future Hilton Garden Inn will be the fourth Hilton-branded hotel in the country.

Number of housing property deals in Bulgaria’s capital doubled in January – Bulgarian Properties

The number of transactions on Sofia’s housing market in January 2011 was double that of January 2010, Sofia-based real estate agency Bulgarian Properties said.

According to Polina Stoykova, chief operating officer at the agency, this was the strongest January in terms of residential property deals in Sofia.

Usually, the number of sales at the start of the year is lower, but this is considered a good sign for the real estate market as a whole, because the trend is indicative of Sofia’s entire property market, Stoykova said.

One-bedroom flats at prices of up to 50 000 euro generated the strongest interest in January, followed by two-room apartments at between 75 000 euro and 80 000 euro, as well as luxury flats priced at 120 000 euro to 300 000 euro.

Bulgarian Government to allocate 2M leva for Bansko FIS World Cup

Bulgaria’s Government will allocate more than two million leva to finance the men’s alpine skiing World Cup event, which will be hosted by the country’s top mountain resort of Bansko, the country’s Prime Minister Boiko Borissov said on February 1 2011.

As much as 1.95 million leva of the amount will be provided by the Sports Ministry, while the remaining 100 000 leva will be extended by the Ministry of Energy and Tourism, Borissov told Tseko Minev, head of the Bulgarian Ski Federation (BSF).

The sum will cover 40 per cent of the the total budget earmarked for the event’s organisation, which is estimated at five million leva by BSF.