Investor call for Lisbon Water City development

 In Development, News

The Portuguese government is angling for investment to develop a €2Bn urban master plan development on Lisbon’s south bank of the River Tagus.

The project, called Water City (Cidade de Água) is marketed under a Government-led trademark ‘Baía do Tejo’ which aims to regenerate a swathe of land which in the first half of the 20th century was a bustling shipbuilding and industrial area but since the 1980s has steadily declined with the death of old industries.

The brand ‘Baía do Tejo’ in turn is coordinated and managed by the public real estate company Estamo which plans to regenerate these former industrial brown field site lands into new housing developments, a marina, and a new river ferry terminal as well as leisure areas, restaurants and cafés.

Estamo is now advertising the investment opportunities with developers and overseas funds for the 600,000 m2 project (540,000 m2 land and 66,000 m2 water) which stretches 2 km along the South side of the river.

Part of the area was once occupied by Lisbon’s bustling ship building industry whose Lisnave yards slowly decayed and died as orders shifted to the more competitive Far East from the 1980s onwards.

According to the Baía do Tejo project’s website (www.baiadotejo.pt) the current offer is “800 hectares of land located in Lisbon’s metropolitan area allowing for a diverse range of pavilions, warehousing, industrial land and offices, offering a large and versatile range of solutions with active planning, client support and consultancy”.

Curiously, Portugal’s second city of Porto is also lumped in with the Baía do Tejo project which was created in 2009 with the mission to promote Lisbon’s South Riverside Arch project, strengthening economic activity, creating new urban areas, improving accessibility and natural landscape.

The company Baía do Tejo resulted from the merger through incorporation of SNESGES SA and URBINDÚSTRIA SA.

These two companies managed the areas of the former Siderurgia Nacional at Seixal and Seixal Industrial Park. A third entity, Quimparque managed the Barreiro Business Park (Quimigal’s former industrial complex in Barreiro) and the Estarreja Business Park (Quimigal’s former industrial complex in Estarreja).

The mission of the new company Baía do Tejo SA is to develop and manage these brown field sites dubbed for investors in English as the ‘Tagus South Bank Project’ of which ‘Water City’ will be an integral part as announced by the Government in 2009.

According to Eco online news, the main goal is to set up a mixed project in that area which contemplates the creation of a business area, alongside a commerce and service area.

In recent years ‘Water City’ has been shown to foreign investors at several real estate events all over the world.

The company says that several investors have shown an interest in the project which is being advertised in the real estate market throughout 2019.