"We weren't informed of the demolition," said Gábor Csabai, managing director of Tilos Rádio, a former tenant of the Kultiplex. "If our new office weren't two hundred meters away, maybe we wouldn't have known anything about it."
Csabai explained that the building's value had been created entirely by its tenants, and they had waited patiently to recover it.
"The court case involving (the building's operator) Centrifuga and the local government should have been closed for this to happen."
The local council argues that Budapest Film, the building's owner, never gave permission for Centrifuga to sublet it to Kultiplex. Csabai, though, insists a contract was made on the sublet.
Csabai said the former Kultiplex tenants were allowed until 5pm on Monday to remove things from the building, which had no power, complicating the effort. The district mayor allowed them a few hours on Tuesday, too, but there wasn't enough manpower to get the job done. In the end, they left with just a minibus of recovered items, he said.
Péter Lukovits, the attorney for Centrifuga, said the building operator had two possible courses of action: it could ask the police to stop the demolition, or, if this yielded no result, it could sue the local council or damages. "But we can't bring back the demolished building," he said.
The local council recently sold an empty lot along one of the district's main bordering streets to a developer who will build a hotel on the site. The sale, however, cut down on the district's amount of green space, which regulations require remain unchanged. So the local council searched for a building to tear down and turn into a park. It picked the Kultiplex because it was in the worst condition of any of the buildings in the vicinity.
Source: Hungarian News Agency (MTI)
Photo: Balázs Mohai (MTI)
