A big splash about to make waves

Back in July this year, Eurobuild reported that the Silesia Park retail and leisure centre in Katowice had gained a new owner, in the form of the British/Dutch group of investors calling themselves Moonfleet. Everything was set up for a bright future for the project after the sale and Peter Long, Director and Country Manager of Chelverton International, (who with Lend Lease, through Chelverton Properties International N.V and its subsidiary Katsina B.V, were the scheme's original investors), was apparently delighted that Moonfleet were making the investment. Now it turns out they're not: TriGranit are and according to its Chief Executive Officer Todd Cowan, they've "reached and signed an agreement with Lendlease to purchase the property and will close before the end of 2003". So what happened?

Move over

"They pushed us out of the way," says Christopher Samuelson of Moonfleet, adding that his firm are to take legal action against TriGranit, who he claims reneged on an agreement they'd had on the takeover of the project. Others, including TriGranit unsurprisingly, don't share that interpretation of events. Todd Cowan simply comments that: "I understand this group had agreed to purchase the project but walked away and never closed," which suggests something rather less than the relationship hinted at by Samuelson. To Peter Long, the talk of any legal action, "is absolute news to me" and his version is that Moonfleet did not make proper use of their "exclusivity period", which he says was renewed "on a couple of occasions" and that the then potential investor had had "every opportunity" to take over the project. Whatever lies beneath this murk of claim and counter-claim, TriGranit's record does indicate that it's good at getting what it wants. And it's got Silesia Park.

From Budapest to Warsaw

In the five years that TriGranit has been developing and completing USD 500 mln worth of new projects, it has become a real force in Central/Eastern Europe. It was originally formed as a joint venture between Hungarian entrepreneur Sandor Demjan and the Canadian developer TrizecHahn Corp, which together in 1997 finished what was then Hungary's largest mall, the USD 70 mln Polus Centre, only to go and surpass that in 1999 with West End City Centre. It then went beyond its Hungarian base, first off to Bratislava, capital of Slovakia, where it developed the 51,000 sqm Polus City Centre, (38,500 sqm of which is retail space) which was completed in 2000 and where it is also responsible for a couple of office projects. It's portfolio is indeed very diverse and consists of residential, hotels, cultural and entertainment facilities and convention centres and it is now casting its very ambitious eye around the region, where the capitals of the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Romania, Croatia and of course Poland, are about to experience its very tangible presence.

Warsaw's big new player

By beginning their incursions into Poland towards the capital, in Katowice, TriGranit might seem to be departing from their normal behavioural pattern, which is to muscle in very directly on a capital's city centre and develop a project that dominates. "We're trying to create places where people come and meet and not those with some cheap hypermarket, with a very simple mall tacked onto it and has nothing special, like fountains, water features, entertainment and restaurants, for example. We are trying to build very dominant, long-term investments, which won't be matched by others one block away," says Todd Cowan. And now that it has managed to acquire one such in Katowice, it will be striving to develop something similar in Poland's capital. "We are in active discussions with several landowners but as of today we have not acquired anything, though we do plan to locate on a very large strategic site in Warsaw." This is likely to be a retail-dominated multifunctional complex right in the city centre: a landmark for the capital's shoppers and part of the latest generation of such schemes. Rings a bell: at least two other projects: Blue City and Złote Tarasy for example, already claim such status for themselves. If TriGranit does embark on such a project, which it is true, isn't one hundred per cent certain, then the lines of a very fierce battle will have been firmly drawn into the city's turf.

Competition, what competition?

Blue City's Yoram Reshef claims he's never heard of TriGranit but Todd Cowan doesn't seem overly perturbed by that development's impending presence in the city, or any others for that matter. Of the Reform Company's project he says, "I know it's a total re-design of a different concept, in a location that we wouldn't normally select" and of Żłote Tarasy, he remarks: "It is in a strategic location but it also has design elements which we probably would not have incorporated." An intriguing comment, because the architects for both TriGranit's West End City Centre and ING Real Estate's Żłote Tarasy, were the same: the Californian Jerde Partnership (though only as joint designers in the case of the former). Stressing that TriGranit's developments have all been "one hundred per cent leased since they opened", of his potential competitors in Warsaw he adds, "I think the proof is when they're up and running and leased. Other projects [in Warsaw], such as Wola Park, haven't done as well as originally expected by the investors." Despite such forthright talk, Todd Cowan insists that his firm still reserves the right to be flexible and may not develop a retail/entertainment project in Warsaw at all: "If there's too much competition, we may find we have to build an office building there, or do something different, maybe a partnership with the government and help build cultural facilities or residential." Whatever it ends up being, construction on it will reportedly begin in February next year and last eighteen months.