NMBS puts office complexes at Brussels South for sale (Brussels)

The NMBS is looking for a buyer for four office complexes at Brussels South station, covering 150,000 square meters. De Tijd wrote this on Friday. Normally, the consortium that is allowed to build the new headquarters of the railway company would take over the sites.

This concerns the France-Bara complex on France Street, the triangular Atrium office building on Hallepoortlaan and the two connected office buildings Delta-Zennewater. These are for sale on the railway company’s website, under ‘NMBS real estate’.

With the public sale procedure, NMBS is making a U-turn: the redevelopment of the sites would first be done by a consortium with Besix, BPC/BPI (two subsidiaries of CFE) and Immobel. That group will also build the new headquarters of the railway company at the back of the South Station. The awarding of this contract in 2020 was linked to the takeover of the four sites, with which NMBS wanted to partly finance its headquarters.

It is unclear why the deal was adjusted, but according to De Tijd it appears that the consortium is no longer interested in the four sites. For example, the calculations from 2020 are no longer realistic due to the sharply increased construction costs and the stagnant real estate market.