EUR 40 M Office Complex, Hilton Garden Inn to Be Built in Sofia

A new office complex with a Hilton Garden Inn hotel will be opened in Bulgaria's capital Sofia in the third quarter of 2011, according to reports.

About EUR 40 M will be invested in the BLU Offices & Hilton Garden Inn complex, reported Bulgarian business news site investor.bg citing IHM OOD, the investor in the new development.

The new office and hotel complex will be located on the Brussels Blvd very close to the Sofia International Airport. The first Hilton Garden Inn-branded hotel in Bulgaria will have 200 rooms.

The offices will be located in two 65-meter-high towers (16 storeys each), with a total of 20 000 square meters of office space; the entire complex will have a built-up area of 50 000 square meters.

The funding for the investment is provided by Erste Group Immorent (EGI). According to Yani Stoimenov cited as a consultant to the project, the funding is under favorable interest rates, and allows the investors to offer offices at very attractive prices, possibly with zero rent for the first one or two years. In his words, for the next 5-10 years, however, the offices in the complex will cost EUR 8 per square meter per month.

The Bulgarian capital Sofia already has a Hilton Hotel, the Hilton Sofia, in its downtown; a Doubletree by Hilton hotel was opened in the Golden Sands resorts in the summer of 2010 to be followed by the Hilton Varna in the summer of 2011.

If the new investment in Sofia is realized, the future Hilton Garden Inn will be the fourth Hilton-branded hotel in the country.