Large companies have been push for abandoning the center of Barcelona for years. The office floors are outdated and offered in a single property a few square meters to accommodate a large number of workers. In this situation other vector pressured to move to more peripheral areas added: the little gap so absorbed first homes and then (now) hotels. The result: in the last ten years the office market in the center of the Catalan capital has lost 380,000 square meters, 12% of its total area, according to data from the property consultant JLL.
In the first half of the last decade were the floors which pulled demand and colonized offices. In some areas promoted luxury housing, allowing achieve profitability over 6% or 7%. With the crisis, this activity was stopped short and took over the conversion in new hotels. The tourist pull of Barcelona and its millions of tourists sleeping in a hotel (7.5 last year) contributed to the boom, which guarantees profit margins of between 7% and 8% per room, explains CEO JLL in Catalonia, Jordi Toboso. Last year alone this process affected 95,000 square meters.
This latter phenomenon is currently alive. The former headquarters of Banesto has been acquired by Pontegadea (Amancio Ortega) to convert it into a hotel. The Generalitat has sold various properties-including the current headquarters of the Department of Economics and Knowledge-where other hotel establishments are located. The building that housed the headquarters of Heinkel undergo the same transformation. The same steps will the Agbar Tower or the former headquarters of Deutsche Bank, whose future after being demolished, is to become a hotel of luxury Four Seasons teaches. Most of these transformation will end closing next year.
Read more: http://ccaa.elpais.com/ccaa/2015/02/09/catalunya/1423498560_534104.html