Focus Mall is destroying the old historic building it failed to restore!
Every resident of Zielona Góra knows that Focus mall used to be “Polska Wełna” a wool factory that was the symbol of Zielona Góra. During the 2nd world war, this factory at the time, German, known as “Deutsche Wollenwaren Manufaktur A.G.” was transformed into a forced labor camp under the administration of the infamous Gross–Rosen concentration camp.
I started with this brief history just to emphasize the historical value of these buildings, one of which constitute the current Focus Mall. Focus Mall, a consumption temple that single handily crippled the commerce in the “deptak” area, opened on September 17, 2008 by a British investment company specialized in renovating old buildings and transforming them into malls. Some say it’s progress others think that malls take the soul of small cities. Whatever i or you think does not matter, because reality on the ground is the reality of the “fait accompli” or done deal, Focus became the destination for a lot of Zielonogorians when it comes to shopping.
But the capitalistic greed pushed the owners of the mall to expand it further, for 5000-10 000 EUR monthly rent per small shop, expanding the mall would bring an easy 500 000 EUR/month by the lowest estimates, a reason that led the investment company to put a 45 million Euro towards rehabilitating the other old buildings constituting the old complex … except they failed miserably and now have one of the building completely razed.
A photo gallery by Gazeta Lubuska shows that the intentions were to renovate the building, however as you can see by the photos taken by me below the link, the attempts to restore the building in a way suitable for a commerce mall failed, thus instead they decided to simply raze it.
As you can see below, it is apparent that they started realizing that the plan would not go as expected:
And then they decided to just destroy everything:
