Brilliant Example: Karlovac County Donated Valuable Properties to the Trade and Hospitality School

Through a donation agreement signed on Tuesday by the County Prefect of Karlovac County, Damir Jelić, and the Principal of the Trade and Hospitality School Karlovac, Damir Pleša, Karlovac County donated a complex of properties located on Radićeva Street to the school. The estimated value of the donated properties, which include a school, a mixed-use building, an economic building, a transformer station, and a yard, with a total area of 2,562 square meters, amounts to approximately eight million kuna.

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The mentioned complex in the old city core of Karlovac was, until the Homeland War, a barracks of the JNA, and after renovation and the transfer of ownership from the state to Karlovac County, the Trade and Hospitality School Karlovac has been operating there since 1998, with 348 students enrolled this school year. It can be said that this was perhaps the first real example of quality repurposing of military spaces in an attractive location in the city relatively soon after the end of the war, but unfortunately, this did not become the norm, and only later did the Karlovac Polytechnic follow the same path.

Through the land registry registration of ownership over the properties where the Trade and Hospitality School has been functioning for 20 years, Principal Pleša stated, the school has finally met the conditions for applying for programs to withdraw funds from EU funds. The first such concrete step, Pleša added, relates to measures to increase energy efficiency, which will reduce the school’s operating costs in the long term while also contributing to the quality of stay and work in the school facilities.

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County Prefect Jelić, emphasizing the value of the educational programs of this school, especially at a time when the Croatian tourism sector is facing a shortage of trained hospitality and hotel staff, announced further donations to this school, but at other locations where new classrooms would be established, with the continuation of space donations to the school coming from the state. Such an exit from the current entirety of the school complex will occur, Jelić explained, based on the assessment that far less funding is needed to arrange spaces near the school than to invest in the renovation of the attics of the buildings in the school complex, and due to proximity, classes will not be affected.

The county will, Jelić added, also donate the old school building in Plaški Municipality, which reportedly has a vision for what to do with that property, but special attention will be paid to possible arrangements with local schools. Instead of the current model, under which the main schools must transfer money from the potential sale of properties of non-functional local schools to the County’s account, the prefect promises even financial assistance to main schools that have a quality plan for what to do with the properties of closed local schools. This stance was illustrated by examples of local schools in the areas of Slunj and Ogulin, which have become facilities serving hunting tourism, while in Plaški, Vojnić, and Bosiljevo, they have production facilities.