Water City: €2bn real estate development project, in the South bank of Tejo, is looking for investors

Water City has been managed until now by Baía do Tejo, and it envisions creating housing, hotels, a marina, and a new river terminal, as well as some leisure areas, with cafés and such.

Baía do Tejo, in turn, is owned by Estamo, the Portuguese government’s real estate company, and it is now placing the Water City project in the real estate market, looking for new buyers. The Water City project is over 600 thousand square meters wide, and it stretches through two kilometres of the river Tagus.

The project started being planned a couple of years ago, and during that time it has been presented to several international investors. Many different entities have already shown interest in investing in the project, and that investment can go up to €2bn.

It is located on the other side of the river, which the Portuguese refer to as “Margem Sul”, which indeed literally means “South Side” of the Tagus.

Here, a new project will be born, stretching out through 630 thousand square meters, of which 540 thousand are land and 66 thousand are water.

It is part of Almada’s urbanization plan, and it is meant to be built in the area which was formerly used for Lisnave’s shipyards.

The main goal is to set a mixed project in that area, which contemplates the creation of a business area, alongside a commerce and service area, a new river terminal for boats, and a leisure and culture area, the company Baía do Tejo explained to ECO. During the last few years, Water City — a name which was chosen to make it simpler to present to foreign investors — has been shown to many international investors, in several real estate events all over the world.

Now that most of the administrative and bureaucratic procedures are behind them, Baía do Tejo is ready to place the project in the market. According to the company, the vested interest several investors have already shown has supported them in taking that step in the first semester of 2019 — as the website PropertyEU announced earlier. “We want to put our project on the market in the first semester of the year”, said a spokesman from the company.

The project can be sold in two different ways: through a sort of public tender or gathering a pool of investors that are interested in developing Water City, a source close to the project told ECO. “We received demonstrations of interest from many different entities from across different geographies”, Baía do Tejo noted.

The idea is that the promoter of the project takes it all and develops it according to what has been planned. However, that entity will have the right to decide what to build in 65% of the area, which is considered a mixed area, according to ECO’s source. Out of the 630 thousand square meters the project has available, 5% are destined to residential projects.

Water City project mock-up, Lisbon south bank