Merlin Properties plans to build a seven-storey office building in Malaga, in what will be its first project outside its three traditional fiefdoms: Barcelona, Lisbon and Madrid.
The Socimi has set its sights on Malaga after the technology multinational Google decided to locate its new centre of excellence in cybersecurity in the city, which will open its doors during the second half of this year.
The new office building will be located on the Antonio Machado promenade, very close to the city centre and the María Zambrano high-speed train station, and will have 10,000 square metres of floor space and 140 underground parking spaces. The project, which will be built on a site currently occupied by a car dealership, jointly by Merlin Properties and a Malaga developer - the Nieto family, represented by Benjamín Nieto Segura - is expected to be ready in 2025.
Merlin intends to build "the best office building in the city" and to this end will soon open the competition to choose the architectural firm that will draw up the project.
According to Fernando Ramírez, Merlin is committed to "those cities with a sufficient critical mass, a structural deficit of office product and a growing entrepreneurial ecosystem", and Malaga meets these three conditions, as it is estimated that "the unsatisfied demand awaiting state-of-the-art office buildings is approximately 50,000 square metres".
In fact, he assures that his own clients, mainly multinationals, have expressed their interest in setting up in Malaga, although they had nowhere to go.
