Walta Media and Communication Center, which obtained land six years ago, at an old amphitheater, located at Churchill Road, plans to build a ground plus 15-storey building at an approximate cost of half a billion birr.
The place initially belonged to Mega Arts and Advertisement Agency, before their assets were liquidated after the company suffered a financial crisis and was unable to pay its debts. As a result the court gave the property to Walta.
It took six years for the Addis Ababa City Administration to give the title deed to Walta because of bureaucratic issues.
The property is 2,600sqm and was used to show dramas, theater and musical concerts. In May 2005 the facility was destroyed by a wind storm.
Atsede Gebremeskel, Walta’s Deputy Corporate Manager told Capital that the new office plan will be one building instead of the three proposed previously.
“We need a total of 10,000sqm for the three buildings but the city administration told us that we could only have the land we requested if we paid compensation for relocating people with homes in that area and we don’t have the money to do that so we changed our plan and decided to construct one building.”
She said construction will begin during the next Ethiopian year and tender for design and construction will be posted in a few months.
She added that the current office, located near Beklo Bet will continue to be used for media work.
We are expanding and building new rooms in our current office to do extra media work. We will not construct a high rise building because the area is one of the green spots in the master plan of Addis Ababa.’’
Walta Information and Public Relations Center is affiliated with the Ethiopian government. The Tigray, Oromia, Amhara, Southern People’s Nations and Nationalities endowment companies own Walta.
Recently Walta started a satellite TV station, and the Center is also known for producing documentary films broadcasted through the Ethiopian Broadcast Corporation.