Richard Moravec dies: developer who put Olomouc on the map

Developer and entrepreneur Richard Moravec, one of the most influential regional businessmen in Czechia and the man behind the transformation of his native Olomouc and one of the biggest deals on the Prague property market in recent years, died early on Thursday morning at the age of 56. In late July he was seriously injured in a car accident in Spain, after which he was taken to hospital in Olomouc, where he later died.

For many years Moravec remained a figure of largely regional stature — his development group Redstone shaped the face of his native Olomouc almost single-handedly, delivering key projects from the Šantovka retail and office complex to the large future district of Nová Velkomoravská. The company's headquarters occupied the top floor of the Envelopa Office Center, with a panoramic view of the historic centre, St Wenceslas Cathedral and Hradisko Monastery.

Over the past year, however, the businessman had sharply expanded his ambitions well beyond Moravia. Besides active construction projects in Pardubice and Ostrava, he made a high-profile push into Prague. The investment fund MAX Realitní, which Moravec built together with his long-time friend and business partner, Creditas Group owner Pavel Hubáček, completed a deal early this year to acquire two landmark Prague properties at once — the Myslbek shopping centre and the Flora complex. It was one of the biggest deals on the Czech commercial property market in recent years and instantly propelled Moravec into the top tier of Czech investors.

In an interview published by Forbes almost a year ago, Moravec stressed that he had no intention of competing head-on with giants of Prague development such as Penta or Sekyra Group, preferring his own growth strategy instead. Alongside his business expansion, he kept fighting for an ambitious project in his native Olomouc — a high-rise building meant to give the city an even more striking view — and, in his own words, never intended to give up that fight despite numerous administrative obstacles.

Richard Moravec's death cuts short the career of an entrepreneur who, in the space of just a few years, rose from a regional builder to one of the leading players on the Czech property market, leaving behind a substantial legacy — both in completed projects and in ambitious plans that will now have to be carried out without him.