BREAKING NEWS! Mega real-estate deal planned at Budapest’s largest railway stations, says Vitézy

Dávid Vitézy, the leader of the Podmaniczky Movement in the city assembly, has said a mega real estate deal is being planned in which the landholdings of Budapest’s four major train stations would be leased out for 99 years and developers would be able to commercialise the stations and their surroundings “for free.”

Speaking at a press conference on Monday at Nyugati Square, Vitézy said construction and transport minister János Lázár had opened the deal allowing national railway company MÁV to lease out the properties. He said the seven-page tender issued would close at the end of January. As we wrote earlier, Outrage erupts as Hungarian minister Lázár crosses the line with offensive remarks: Vitézy is an ‘aberrant, liberal kids, bootlicker’

Vitézy said MÁV had shown him the draft contract which included neither a purchase price nor a rental fee. Moreover, it did not prescribe any developments for prospective investors, he said.

He said Lázár’s ministry had claimed that the tenders only concerned the renovation of the station buildings, which he called “misleading”, as the tenders also would allow private companies access to areas of 15-30 hectares surrounding the stations, he added.

He said the tenders failed to include where and what the applicants should develop “in these vast areas” and had not been preceded by any consultation with either the districts or the capital.

He said that selling Budapest’s brownfield sites to investors “based on a seven-page shopping list” was typical of “the most corrupt countries in the developing world.”