HUNDREDS OF Lisbon city centre buildings are standing empty because owners don’t have the money to do them up.
Despite being granted planning permission for improvements and change of use, many 19th and early 20th century buildings remain in a dilapidated and rundown state because the owners believe it is cheaper to wait until they have to be torn down and sell the land on to developers.
The problem is that the cost of doing up the buildings is more than the buildings are worth.
Another issue is that because many of the buildings are of historic and architectural interest, they are listed by the Câmara and cannot be torn down or altered in their essential outward characteristics.
Yet another impediment is that those that are inhabited are filled with tenants paying ‘peanut’ rents which, despite changes in the law, will take years to reach current market prices.
According to Lisbon Câmara’s Urban Planning Executive Officer Manuel Salgado, more than 200 empty buildings having been issued planning permission licences to carry out refurbishment work but the owners, in the vast majority of cases, don’t go and pick up the licences and pay for them.
There are, according to the Câmara, 4,681 buildings standing empty in Lisbon, 226 have already got planning permission licenses, 408 are considered top priority for refurbishment, 322 belong to the municipal authority, 60 to public entities, while of the total, 730 are either being evaluated by the Câmara or already being done up.
Of the 4,681 buildings, 347 were evaluated by the Câmara before 2008 while 165 came onto the Câmara’s record books this year.
Standing empty
Within the Detailed Baixa Pombalina Redevelopment Plan, Plano de Pormenor da Baixa Pombalina, 98 buildings in the historic Baixa downtown area are partially or totally vacant of which 34 have not been refurbished because strict listed building licence laws (Article 40 of the Plano Director Municipal) only allow restoration and conservation.
In Lisbon’s famous Avenida da Liberdade alone, there are 16 buildings standing empty, of which 13 have been granted improvement licences with eight in the process of being done up.
The Câmara says that it aims to clear backlogs on all licence applications and restoration orders by the end of the year.
In many cases, property owners hold out for multinational developers to buy the buildings or face Câmara re-appropriation and forced auction sale below market prices.
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