Las Vegas on Danube
Mordechai Zisser, chairman of the Israeli-owned company Plaza Centers, has big plans for the Hungarian market. He was behind the vast Arena Plaza on Kerepesi ut and the "Hungarian Las Vegas" being built on Hajogyari Island. His company was behind Duna Plaza, built 12 years ago, and has since built 15 others around the country. hvg.hu spoke to Zisser in Jerusalem.
Plaza Centers created the first shopping centre in Hungary, and even though you have sold all of them - 12 to the French, four to the English - you have changed Hungarian consumers' habits and weekends for ever . Perhaps no city has as many shopping centres as Budapest, and almost every major provincial city can lay claim to one or two such 'refuges'. Did you realise that shopping malls would prove such a success?
An important reason for our success was that we tried to be first movers. Speed wasn't everything: it would have been easy to fleece a naive foreign investor if we hadn't done our homework properly. In the mid-1990s, interest rates stood at 16 per cent, there were piles of regulation and red tape, and there were barely any foreign brands in the marketplace. Under those conditions, you could only invest if you had thorough knowledge of local peculiarities and the ability to adapt swiftly. Things are different in Hungary nowadays - you have European conditions, things are easier for businessmen. Of course, with lower risk levels, yields get smaller too: back then we could get returns of 22 or 23 per cent, now we have to be satisfied with something like 8 per cent.
I can't really feel sorry for you. It's far more worrying to hear that the malls are driving the smaller shops out of business. Not just in Budapest, but in other cities as well, once busy high streets are empty and shops are closing throughout entire districts.
It's not just the malls that are to blame. For one thing, most shopping centres were built on decaying industrial sites that needed urgent rehabilitation. We've spruced up all kinds of neighbourhoods, pushed up residential property values, improved entire districts. The other thing is that city centres are changing all around the world. Who ever decided that certain streets are sacred and that they should be reserved exclusively for trade? We have to rethink the role of city centres - maybe arts and galleries could take the place of shops in the centres of our towns.
What other plans does Plaza Centers have in Hungary?
We're building central and eastern Europe's biggest ever shopping and entertainment centre on Kerepesi ut, and we hope to open the E200m project by the end of the year. The Arena Plaza Mall will have more than 200 shops, a huge hypermarket, a 1000-seat conference centre, restaurants, a gallery exhibiting the works of young artists that will resemble the bazaar of Istanbul. There will be a 22-screen cinema and Hungary's first 3D IMax screen.
We're starting work on a sports, entertainment and free-time centre on Hajogyari Island, with a budget of E1.5bn. We have a 30 per cent stake in this project. In place of the old shipyard, we will build Europe's largest entertainment centre, with theatres, a casino, more than 6000 hotel rooms and a covered aquapark. We'd like the island to mean for Europeans what Las Vegas or Hawaii do to Americans. We want them to book a flight and spend a few days in Budapest for this one reason. We've completed the basic planning and secured planning permission. We're now working on construction plans. I'd add that we're spending E50m on renovating the Ballet School opposite the Opera. We're turning it into a 210-room hotel which will work in cooperation with the Opera.
Zsuzsa Shiri / Jerusalem
Sebestyen Gorka: new parties on the horizon?
The idea arose a few weeks ago, and now it's an acknowledged fact: major changes are brewing on the Right; even new parties may emerge. I have been living in this nightmare country for long enough to know that the most startling bits of news tend to be baseless. But things are different this time.
Setting a bad example
He was banned from teaching in secondary schools, imprisoned on charges of conspiracy and later 'pardoned' before becoming the father of tax reform in the 1980s. For two years following the regime change he served as finance minister. He founded the Centrum Party before announcing this year that he is to turn his back on politics. hvg.hu spoke to Mihaly Kupa about his life, political economy and the government's forced reform agenda.
At the centre of power
Ministers' private offices and the cabinet heads who run them are now more influential than ever. The cabinet head at the Defence Ministry, Peter Szeredi, has a job description running into 53 entries on the ministry's internal rule book. He is responsible for the Military Air Affairs Office, but also for employment levels at the ministry. The importance of his position is shown by the fact that the chief of staff runs not just the minister's private office but five other important units, running to 109 people, in a ministry with just 499 official posts.
At home in Europe
How is student life in western Europe different from at home? HVG spoke to a few university students studying in the 'exotic West'.
Witness to dictatorships
To whom does Arthur Koestler belong? A foreigner would doubtless say he belonged to all, or that a great writer and thinker, one of the most authentic witnesses to the twentieth century is the common property of all humanity, wherever he lived. But we are in Hungary, in Budapest, the city where he was born, and so we should be more careful.
Party split or an escape to the right
Fidesz may eventually split into a national liberal party and a Christian Democrat party led by Viktor Orban, but a putsch can be ruled out.
Public services
Local services cost twice as much in the country's most expensive towns as in the cheapest regions. Both political and economic factors lie behind the variations in price.
