UDI Group is starting construction in another European market, Hungary after the new year. The mixed-use Parkside project in Budapest is planned near Váci Road with apartments and a hotel for medium and long-term accommodation.
The Parkside project required a little longer preparation. The group originally planned an office building here, but after COVID-19, following demand, it was transformed into housing and a hotel. Similarly, UDI is now considering changing the neighbouring LaViza office building project. The office market has not yet recovered from the Covid slump, while there is enormous interest in apartments in the Hungarian capital, just like elsewhere in Europe.
"The land for both the Parkside and LaViza projects is a brownfield site after a former printing house. But the entire original industrial district has undergone a huge transformation and today it is one of the most sought-after addresses in Budapest," explained Szilvia Vida, Director at UDI Group for Hungary.
In the Parkside project, 324 apartments will be created in a mix of large and smaller layouts. It has more than 350 parking spaces and 1,600 sqm of retail on the ground floor. The Staybridge Suites hotel will be part of the building and will offer 152 rooms with kitchenettes for medium to long-term accommodation. Its operator will be the Mogotel hotel group from the Baltics, which operates dozens of hotels across Europe and will operate under the global hotel chain IHG. The project has been issued with a building permit and now the group has also selected the general contractor for the construction, Bernecker Zrt.
Hungary is thus the fifth market where the international developer UDI Group, originally from the Czech Republic, is building. In addition to projects on the Czech market in Prague, Brno and other locations, the group is now finishing the construction of the 2nd stage of its extensive Classic Ursus project in Warsaw, Poland. In Belgrade, Serbia, it completed the first building of the Lastavice project in the summer and is now starting the construction of its second residential project, Zvezdano Brdo. It also recently started building the Square 72 high-rise apartment building in the capital of Panama and is planning construction in Costa Rica.
"Hungary is a perspective market. In the past year, the prices of new apartments here grew the fastest in all of Europe, which is a very good starting situation for us," explained Marcela Fialková, Strategy Director at UDI Group.
