PL

Edition 4 (199) April 2015

Editorial

The power in simplicity

“Come, scatter flowers – let us sow fair April here!” I can still hear Butterfly singing this as she waits for Mr Pinkerton, who is returning to his wife after three years and as she decorates the entire house with flowers for the occasion.

Ewa Andrzejewska
Investment & finance

Hungry like the Griffin

POLAND Michał Sołowow, the majority shareholder of Echo Investment, has finally found a party interested in the acquisition of one of the largest development companies in this part of Europe. A subsidiary of both Griffin Topco III, (which is controlled by Oaktree) and a fund managed by Pimco is to step into the breach in mid-April.

Tomasz Szpyt
Retail & leisure

Real estate machine

POLAND Austrian developer and investor Immofinanz Group has just opened its first larger scale shopping centre in Poland built from scratch.

Aneta Cichla
Retail & leisure

Polish malls in good shape

POLAND An average Polish shopping centre offers 28,000 sqm of space, while its rent rates amount to EUR 17.5 per sqm per month and the turnover is EUR 2,010 per sqm a year, according to a CBRE report. The survey is based on data sourced from 85 standard shopping centres in Poland (which accounts for 20 pct of the entire retail space in the country) in 31 cities and towns.

Aneta Cichla
Stock market report

It was good, it’s now even better

The sector indexes have recently been higher than the broader market indexes. WIG-Construction has gained nearly 25 pct since the beginning of the year compared to the very slight movements on both main indexes. Meanwhile, the global stock exchanges were turning green

Feature

Meeting the sky, meeting the ground

Goettsch Partners, one of the most renowned American architectural studios, recently completed its design for the Mennica Legacy Tower office building, which is to be developed by Golub GetHouse and Mennica Polska in Warsaw’s Wola district. We spoke to James Goettsch, the founder of the Chicago-­based firm, about what kind of legacy he wants to leave to Varsovians

Rafał Ostrowski, Tomasz Szpyt
Investment & finance

No man’s land... or the promised land?

The number of transactions is in the thousands and their value is comparable to the turnover of consulting agencies on the Polish investment market. However, the small commercial properties market in Poland (for assets worth up to PLN 20 mln) is rather fragmented and it is difficult to get a clear view of it. But where the larger players are leaving the field open, the smaller ones are doing some serious business

Tomasz Szpyt
Residential

Keeping up living standards - and values

Well-cared for greenery, solar panels on the roof, funds for future renovations in the residents’ association’s budget – an apartment building can be a developer’s showpiece many years after its completion. However, it has to be well-managed

Rafał Ostrowski
New technologies

Locating the customer

GPS, RFID, micro-localisation, the Internet of Things… the list of technological systems for monitoring and communicating with visitors to buildings is growing longer by the day. The field has just been entered by hotels, conference centres, museums and even entire cities

Agata Kłapeć
Events

Absent friends?

If you need to wait over an hour for a table in a restaurant in the middle of March, it is a sure sign that one of the most important real estate events in Europe – the MIPIM fair – has started. This year, as usual, the guests turned up in large numbers and the regular visitors did not disappoint, there were some new ones as well as a lack of some of the others who had until now always had a strong presence

Tomasz Szpyt
Events

To reach the top of Rondo 1

The fifth Rondo 1 Run-up is now over, and yet I still get excited at the thought of what the participants of the event managed to achieve. Eleven steps and a left turn, eleven and a left turn – repeat eighty times. If reading this makes your head spin – just think about what the competitors had to go through

Endpiece

Ever decreasing quarters

Very small apartments and hybrid furniture that has many different functions at the same time – these are set to be key components of future metropolises. We are expected to be living more modestly, in more crowded conditions, but by employing highly ingenious space utilisation methods

Rafał Ostrowski

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