Benko plans €65mn Lake Garda estate

A Tyrolean real estate developer intends to invest tens of millions of Euros into an estate at one of Italy’s most beautiful lakes.

Rene Benko announced on Sunday he decided to spend 65 million Euros on the creation of a building complex featuring villas, terraced houses and apartments at Lake Garda. Tenants will be able to move into the 78,000-square-metre estate in 2013, he added.

David Chipperfield and other renowned architects will create the facility. The project is not the first cooperation between Benko and Chipperfield. The Briton also designed the Kaufhaus Tyrol, a department store in Innsbruck, Tyrol.

Benko explained his Signa Holding (Signa) will have invested “nearly one billion Euros” into building projects across Europe by the end of this year, around the same amount the company had spent in 2010.

The holding’s property portfolio is worth 4.5 billion Euros, according to Austrian business press. It spent half a billion Euros in Germany in June when it bought a building in Hamburg and two estates in Munich.

Only last month, Signa bosses signed contracts with international hotel management company Hyatt over setting up a Park Hyatt five-star hotel in the city centre of Vienna. The hotel will feature a Prada fashion shop, according to Benko. Both hotel and shop will open in two years’ time.