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Johan Leman, 12 September 2022

The project of the Investment Tower on Place Sainctelette in Molenbeek is a good example of how the relationship between speculator, investors in Real Estate and public authorities works, even in cases where it is to be hoped that everything goes correctly.

The speculator is someone who acquires land and after a while exchanges it for new land, which in his eyes will have a higher value in the long run. He has Investors in Real Estate in mind (himself, or friends, or allies) who can become candidates for building on his land in the future as part of a very large project. The Place Sainctelette , for example, was planned to become the site of a large administrative centre. The construction of the Amal sports hall prevented this from happening at the very angle, and there were also already enough other buildings for administrations. From then on, a new idea came up: let’s put a high residential tower there for small investors in apartments and studios. In view of the land value, this cannot be a simple 6-storey tower, but must be at least 14 storeys. 

For the developer, it is then a matter of successfully negotiating with the useful authorities as soon as possible and convincing them of the usefulness of such a high investment tower. Once he can win over the relevant ministers, procedures are started, permits requested, and regulations adjusted where necessary. At a certain point, authorities, sometimes people who received the dossiers from their predecessors, can no longer retrace their steps, because they are too deeply committed to the project and, if the project is rejected, it runs the risk of very high damage claims. And if they want to re-buy the land, for example in order to plant trees instead of a high residential tower, the purchase price has become too high.

This is the current state of the debate surrounding the Investment Tower on Place Sainctelette. I can imagine that there are people among the authorities who also realize that this Investment Tower does not benefit the aesthetic appearance and does not solve the housing problem in Brussels in any way, and moreover, that in light of climate change, it is not desirable that this Investment Tower is built. But the problem for such people then becomes: how high can the damage claim run and how expensive is the land involved if one has to buy it?  And then an absurd reasoning is developed: this Investment Tower will be compensated by a so-called new green zone… In concrete terms, this is a piece of wasteland, which is actually already a green zone, but for a very small part inaccessible, and this land is then declared a compensatory new green zone, which it actually is not, because it was already there. So, anything but new.

This is what I mean when I write that in Brussels it is the speculators and Real Estate investors who largely determine the urbanization policy along the canal.

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