Square meter 2.691 euros, excluding utilities: The main information from the conceptual design was not disclosed at the presentation of "Velji Brdo"

The construction of residential buildings in the first phase of the Velje brdo settlement will cost 2.691 euros per square meter of net area, excluding the costs of utility infrastructure, according to data published in the selected urban and architectural conceptual design of Block A1, within the first phase of the implementation of the "Velje brdo" settlement.

As the Government continues to state that the price for citizens will be 1.000 euros per square meter, this means that the difference, which for the total net residential area of ​​the first phase would amount to 74 million euros, would have to be paid from the state or city budget, plus the costs of infrastructure construction, which are still unknown because there are no final solutions yet.

The authors of the selected conceptual design are Dejan Milanovic i Grozdana Sisovic from Serbia, who received a prize of 100 thousand euros.

In the part of the decision relating to the costs of constructing the first residential block, it is stated that the construction of the above-ground (residential) floors of all buildings will cost 83,85 million euros, the underground floors (garages) 28,77 million, and the development of the plot on which the buildings are located will cost 5,41 million euros. In other words, the costs of constructing this residential block, excluding the costs of communal infrastructure, will cost 118 million euros. Most of the buildings have two underground floors, which means deep excavations in the rocky hill.

This section states that all buildings (their above-ground part) will have a gross developed construction area of ​​69.875 square meters, and that the price will be 1.200 euros per square meter of gross area. In addition, a square meter of garage would cost 600 euros, and the cost of developing the plot would be 100 euros per square meter. The calculation does not include the cost per square meter of the net area of ​​the apartment, although this is the most important information because the future selling price of the apartment depends on it.

The second part of the table states that this block will have 557 apartments, 296 with 60 square meters of net area and 261 with 100 square meters of net area, i.e. that the total net area of ​​the residential part is 43.860 square meters. When the cost of building the buildings of 118,03 million euros is divided by the net area of ​​the residential space, the result is that the construction of a square meter of apartment costs 2.691 euros, without the costs for the necessary infrastructure of roads, water supply, sewage, electricity and telecommunications networks, etc. There is currently no infrastructure on Velje Brdo.

This most important piece of information about the cost of building construction per net square meter of residential space was not announced at the conference of the Ministry of Spatial Planning, Urbanism and State Property three days ago, where the selected conceptual design was presented.

Minister Slaven Radunović told the conference that apartments in the first block will be sold for 1.000 euros per square meter, while the price correction will occur in the subsequent phases of the settlement.

"At the moment, it's a stretch of 1.000 euros, but that's a promise made by the government and it will be like that. But for the next phases, it will still be extremely cheap, but we will probably adjust the price for these two years or for the increase in construction materials...", Radunović said at the time.

This means that the state will bear the cost of 1.691 euros per net square meter of living space, which is 74 million euros plus the costs of building communal infrastructure. All this to obtain 557 apartments.

The cost of building the communal infrastructure has not yet been officially announced. Geological and hydrological studies of the Velje Brdo area and the Mareza spring have not yet been completed, an environmental permit for the project has not been issued, and it is not known how the issue of water supply and wastewater disposal from atmospheric and fecal sewage will be resolved, nor how the settlement will be connected to the electricity grid.

The documentation that accompanied the changes to the Podgorica Spatial Urban Plan stated an approximate estimate that the construction of communal infrastructure for the entire future settlement with 11,5 thousand apartments would cost 600 million euros.

The Council for the Revision of Planning Documents at the end of 2024 gave a qualified opinion with a reservation that the costs of infrastructure construction were significantly underestimated. Member of the Spatial Planning Council, M.Sc. Dragoljub Markovic, a graduate spatial planner, gave a negative assessment at the time.

The council made a large number of remarks on the proposed changes to the plan, which refer to the proposed solutions for water supply and waste water removal from the future settlement of Velje brdo.

"The plan practically did not consider hydrotechnical infrastructure, only stating wishes without evidence of whether they are achievable. Based on this, the expected necessary investments were given, which were greatly underestimated," the opinion stated.

The plan envisages that the construction of a pump, water supply network and an underground reservoir of 5.000 cubic meters for the first phase of the settlement will cost 2,76 million euros. The Council's opinion is that these amounts for the first phase will be “several dozen times higher”.

The PUP states that before the construction of the first residential and commercial buildings begins, the necessary infrastructure should be built, listing four main infrastructure projects that need to be completed as a prerequisite for the start of construction of the settlement - a boulevard, a water supply system with pumping facilities and an underground reservoir of 5.000 cubic meters, a main large sewage pipe from Velje Brdo to the new wastewater treatment plant and a new 35/10 kV transformer station.

In the Plan, only this basic part of the infrastructure for the first phase was estimated at 27 million euros, to which the Audit Office said that the costs were significantly underestimated, that is, that they would be many times higher. Now, when announcing the tender for the design of this boulevard, it was stated that its construction would cost 30 million, which clearly shows how underestimated the cost estimate for the construction of the infrastructure was.

Nothing is known about the infrastructure yet, so 557 apartments will be "temporarily" located on septic tanks.

When the start of the works was officially announced 20 days ago (on clearing the terrain for preparing the construction site of the boulevard), it was stated that a working team had just been formed at the beginning of the year to prepare a new strategy for the water supply of Podgorica with Velji Brdo and the drainage of wastewater from the future settlement, as well as the preparation of a strategy for hydrological and geological research and a study of the impact of the settlement itself on the source. It was also stated at the time that an environmental approval or disagreement was expected at the end of the year.

So, it is still unknown whether the construction of the settlement threatens water sources, whether there is enough water from Mareza and other sources for the existing needs of Podgorica and the new settlement of 44 thousand inhabitants, how and where the main sewage pipes from Velje Brdo to Botun, which are 11-12 kilometers long, will be laid.

The competition brief for the conceptual design stated that “there is no built water supply network at the site in question” and that “watertight septic tanks are a temporary solution.” In other words, 557 apartments above the water source will “temporarily” be located on septic tanks.

Radunović said in the Assembly 20 days ago that the Capital City would finance the construction of communal infrastructure for the future settlement of Velje Brdo. There is no item for the infrastructure of Velje Brdo in this year's city budget, while the state budget has 10 million.