The market stirs

After developers, architects are next in line in the process that delivers buildings to the market, which is why Eurobuild asked a number of them working in Warsaw how things were going at the moment. It's no secret that the market has been slumbering of late and it's unlikely to spring into frenetic action in the near future. There are however stirrings afoot

"The situation is pretty stable after one or two years of near silence," says Marcin Sadowski of Jems Architekci, "now there are a few developers who are about to invest in office space."

An end to speculation

Whether this space ends up in concrete however, is quite another matter, as few developers these days are prepared to invest speculatively. But though that tendency might mean that an architect's work might not leave the drawing board, it should also contribute to an improvement in the quality of buildings delivered to the capital. Both architects and developers will have to pull out all the stops, however, to secure the anchor pre-leases they need before construction can start. "In my experience," says Steve Jones of ttsp+HWP, "tenants are looking for the best space available and are prepared to pay more for it." Szymon Wojciechowski of APA Wojciechowski concurs, up to a point, and remarks that, "quality is starting to matter more and more but there are still price-oriented clients looking for office space. Tenants can basically choose from low rents or high quality accommodation." Things have changed a lot since the mid-1990s, when, in Marcin Sadowski's words, "it didn't matter what you built and no one paid much attention towards standards. Then, everyone was trying to get hold of a building permit within three months. Now however, a lot more thought goes into development and you apply for your building permit when you've signed your anchor tenant." But this means that a building's design might be all it ever gets. "There may well have been some wishful thinking," says Sadowski, referring to an exhibition at the Agora building last April, from which perhaps only half the displays stood a chance of being realised. "And even now," he continues, "it's hard to say whether some buildings will go ahead or not, but over the last year there has been some definite movement in the market."

Emerging from the slump

Elsewhere in this issue of Eurobuild there is news of big pre-lease deals at the Crown Point and Crown Tower buildings in Warsaw. Could this be the sign, after a depressing lull, of an upturn? Szymon Wojciechowski comes over as cautiously optimistic: "There are a lot of big deals cruising around at the moment which may or may not happen but there are certainly more rumours and movement than before. There are a lot of developers buying land to start several projects, so it looks as if the big boys are preparing for a boom."