The Barcelona Chamber reinforces its Diagonal headquarters instead of moving to 22@

The Barcelona Chamber of Commerce puts an end to a project that has become increasingly complicated. Almost 20 years later, the corporation chaired by Josep Santacreu has ended up discarding the large office building it was going to erect in 22@, on a plot of land that the Barcelona City Council had ceded to it. After reaching a withdrawal agreement with the council, ratified this Friday in the municipal plenary session by all political groups, the entity reinforces the position of its central offices, located on Avenida Diagonal, where last year it completed an investment of four million euros to completely transform them.

The end of the real estate boom and the subsequent economic slowdown were the first blows received by the Chamber's headquarters in 22@, a project that began to take shape in 2005. A year later, the agreement with the City Council was signed, regulating the surface right for 75 years of the municipal plot. With this operation, the council wanted to regenerate a district that, at that time, needed a boost. It was going to be located on a plot that was also on Avenida Diagonal, like its central offices, but in the lower part, between Selva de Mar and Pujades streets.

Shortly after the first setback, in 2010, came the elimination of the chamber resource, the corporation's main source of income, a measure that paralyzed a very ambitious project and forced it to be rethought and to have to look for alternatives to move it forward. It took quite a while until, in 2019, the municipal plenary session approved modifying the initial agreement and moving to a rental model that would allow the investment to be defrayed. An understanding reached between the government of Ada Colau and the corporation, at that time chaired by Miquel Valls, which determined that the City Council committed to renting 61% of the property for 35 years, reducing the cost and solving the need for office space that the council had. According to the architectural project that had won the international competition, carried out by Taller de Arquitectos Colaboradores, the building was going to have an area of more than 20,000 square meters distributed over 21 floors.

Once that hurdle was overcome, the pandemic arrived, with another economic slowdown that especially affected the office sector. After trying to redirect the project for the umpteenth time, both parties have ended up concluding that it had lost its original meaning, with a 22@ that no longer requires more business revitalization and, if it has any need, it is more affordable public housing, like the rest of the city. With the extinction of the surface right held by the corporation, the City Council has recovered full ownership of the plot.

In addition, the Cambra has also found that it no longer needs as much space as it imagined in 2006. In fact, in its recently renovated Diagonal headquarters, it has concentrated its workers on a few floors and has made the rest available to external companies for rent. Specifically, the building has a total of ten floors, and six of them have been opened to companies that want to set up on Diagonal. Likewise, a coworking space with flexible and private areas, individual videoconference rooms, meeting rooms, and event hosting rooms were enabled. The top floor, the tenth, where the presidency and its team were previously located, has been opened to the entire building, as well as its terrace. Leitat and Parlem are some of the first tenants. The corporation also has the Llotja de Mar, where its corporate headquarters are now located and where its staff was previously installed, until they moved to Diagonal in 1986.