Paper: Bid for Patarei Sea Fortress more than €4.5 million
Businessman Urmas Sõõrumaa, the sole participant in the auction of Tallinn's Patarei Sea Fortress, offered more then €4.5 million for the complex, Ärileht reported.
The architectural solution of the bid was made by the architectural firm Arhitekt11 and will include office space and a hotel. The final price of the offer was not disclosed, but Sõõrumaa, who has previous experience developing the Rotermann Quarter, told Ärileht that it was slightly above the starting price of €4.5 million.
Sõõrumaa's USInvest company created a separate company called Nikolai First OÜ, a reference to Tsar Nikolai I who ordered the construction of prison in 1828, to make the offer.
However, the company has not immediately been named the auction's winner and a number of checks will now be carried out to make sure Sõõrumaa's bid is appropriate.
The goal of the auction was to find a buyer for the Patarei complex who is prepared and able to renovate the sea fortress as an important monument as well as develop the area as a location and comprehensive environment of importance for the City of Tallinn and the Kalamaja neighborhood.
In 1828, Tsar Nicholas I of Russia endorsed a defense plan of Tallinn in accordance with which a coastal defense battery was to be built at the location of former coastal defense structures had stood during Swedish rule. Construction of Patarei's main building began in 1829 and was completed in 1840.
Patarei was used as a Russian army barracks beginning in 1867 and converted into a prison in 1919, a capacity in which it served under various governments and regimes until 2002.
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Editor: Helen Wright