A few months late compared to the planned timing, the Belgian State, through the Belgian sovereign fund SFPIM, is purchasing 23 office buildings from the European Commission. The Belgian Cityforward fund, created by SFPIM and Ethias, and managed by their Brussels-Antwerp partner Whitewood, will soon convert 21 of these buildings in the European district, or 300,000 square meters, into 70% sustainable offices and 30% retail, public facilities but especially housing, announces the press release published this Monday. The amount of the transaction is 900 million euros and will be half financed by bank loans granted by the four Belgian banks mainly.
This large-scale operation led by the SFPIM aims to anchor the European executive and prevent it from moving elsewhere. However, it is obvious that in the context of a very complicated real estate market, financing was difficult to complete. Alongside bank loans, only Belgian institutions whose public shareholding is close to the SFPIM are investing. The SFPIM comes in first position with an amount of several hundred million euros. The insurer Ethias is the second contributor with several tens of millions of euros ahead of Finance&invest.brussels (the holding company of the Brussels Region) and Belfius.
Two of these 23 buildings, located in the Beaulieu district, are sold by the SFPI for 20 million euros to the private companies Matexi and Vincinity who plan to turn them into sustainable housing.
Cooled by the rise in interest rates and a property market in poor shape, large investors did not respond to the SFPI’s call to put money into the pot. They were all the more cooled by the fact that the project does not benefit from a lease guarantee from the Commission because it would have been illegal for it to sign a lease when there is not a construction permit. to build.
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Major redevelopment
The next step will be to launch an architectural competition to transform these approximately 300,000 square meters (out of a total of 870,000 currently occupied by the Commission) into offices and housing according to the strictest environmental and sustainability criteria. . The idea is to start with buildings that are already empty. “This transaction is the starting point of a large-scale redevelopment operation which should ultimately, from 2028, lead to the provision of sustainable offices in which the European institutions could settle, to anchor themselves in Brussels for decades to come,” underlines the press release published Monday. The total cost of the transformations carried out by Whitewood on the buildings is estimated at around 1 billion euros.
For the Cityfoward fund, this is the third major operation in Brussels office real estate after the investment in the Engie and ITT towers.
