Lagoa's Mayor, Luís Encarnação, announced that Lagoa City Council's offer of 2.5 million euros has been accepted, but interestingly, the following night, the Arade Congress Center was vandalised.
Luís Encarnação describes this act as “vile and criminal” and regrets that, in the current circumstances, legally, the Chamber can do nothing, not even guarantee the surveillance of the space that, in 2020, and as a result of the debts accumulated over the years, was declared insolvent.
The mayor says that this is not the first time that cultural equipment has been vandalised. The conclusion of the deal will still take some time, and it will even have to be authorised by the Court of Auditors, but the council has requested that from the moment the promissory contract is signed, they can immediately assume its management, to avoid further vandalism situations.
Inaugurated in 2007, that Arade Congress Center was owned by entities such as the Algarve Tourism Region, the municipal councils of Lagoa, Portimão, Monchique and Silves and some of the largest private companies operating in the western Algarve.
The financing was made using a loan of around 9 million euros from Banco Espírito Santo (currently Novo Banco), an amount that Luís Encarnação considers very high and which made it practically impossible to make money from the investment, not least because soon after they built another facility with some identical features in Portimão, which created competition and divided potential customers.
After a few years, the bank wanted to recover its money, two Special Revitalization Processes were carried out, which did not work and the Arade Congress Center ended up being considered insolvent.
This means that the Lagoa Câmara will only have to pay the 2.5 million euros offered, not bearing the burden of any previous debts.
Luís Encarnação says that, once the deal is concluded, a fundamental step will be taken so that “the Arade Congress Center is no longer a 'white elephant' and becomes an asset for the municipality and the Algarve”.
From a financial point of view, he considers it to be a good investment, which he expects to be recovered in about 10 years. It is a large venue, with a thousand-seat auditorium, which can be used for different types of shows, exhibitions, fairs and even car presentations. The mayor gave examples such as the recent concert by Rui Veloso, which took place at the Carlos do Carmo Auditorium, which “was sold out the day we put the tickets on sale”.
Once the property has been acquired, Luís Encarnação wants its management to follow, in some way, the model that has been developed at the Bela Vista Stadium, where many tournaments and stages of football teams from various countries are held, with advantages for the catering industry and the local hotels. One of the strategies to achieve this is to make the venue available at lower prices or even, in some cases, at no cost to the teams that stay and have their meals in Lagoa.
