Creche landing

It is seven o'clock. We are leaving San Francisco and going towards Mountain View (part of the famous Silicon Valley). The road is busy. However, the traffic is not moving towards the city but in the same direction as us. After several dozen minutes the headquarters of Oracle comes into view, along with the offices of Google and programmers rushing to work. One of them, wearing his jogging outfit, is heading towards one of the office buildings while pushing his kid in a baby buggy. American employers not only know how to make their employees happy but also how to make them save their precious time on everyday duties, such as taking their children to nursery schools in order to devote more time to work.

September debut
The Americans, together with the Germans, are the forerunners in terms of opening company cr?ches and nursery schools. According to Centrum Rozwoju Dziecka, the owner of the Kids&Co nursery schools, German firm Beiersdorf opened a nursery school for its employees as early as 1938. Although in Poland after the Second World War the communist government provided such workplace nursery facilities, most of these were closed in the transformation after 1989. The pioneer after democratisation was ITI, which opened its first pre-school in 2007. This was followed by the Polish branch of Beiersdorf in 2009. "This September the first toddlers will start attending a nursery school including a cr?che unit in the Warsaw Trade Tower building. The kindergarten, which covers 200 sqm on the ground floor of the skyscraper as well as a 450 sqm playground, is big enough for 55 children, although at first it will take in 20," explains Karina Trafna, the founder and owner of Kids&Co, which is the operator of the nursery school. It will be the first school of this brand to be opened in an office building and will be open to all of its tenants. Warsaw Trade Tower, located on ul. Chłodna to the west of central Warsaw, is over a decade old and one of the tallest office buildings in this part of Europe with an office area of 42,300 sqm. Preparations were made for opening a nursery earlier - however, the owner of the building was aware of the fact that an experienced operator was needed who could run the school for many years and not close down after a few months. Finally, the Centrum Rozwoju Dziecka company consulted with tenants before going ahead with plans to open a kindergarten and, as it turned out, the interest was very high. The nursery moved into the premises of one of the existing tenants, which moved its office to another part of the city. The school is now located on the ground floor, with a separate entrance and exit to the playground. The entire area of the square is monitored by a CCTV system.

Opening a nursery school can be done when there is a certain critical mass of office building workers. A few thousand people travel to the WTT building every morning. Across town, in the Adgar office complex on ul. Postępu in the city's Mokotów business district, app. 2,500-3,000 people are employed. The Pomarańczowa Ciuchcia [Orange Choo-Choo] nursery school is to open in the complex in September, having leased an area of 637 sqm in Adgar Plaza for a period of eight years. The nursery school has taken up space on the ground floor, while part of the lawn is to be adapted into a playground. "Pomarańczowa Ciuchcia will not rely exclusively on the office workers from the Adgar complex, but also people working in nearby office buildings. However, our tenants have first call," explains Eyal Litwin, the vice-president of the management board of Adgar Investments & Developments. According to the developer and owner of the complex, this provides a good supplement to its additional offer, as it makes existing tenants enjoy working there even more. People who work in the complex can also use the café and the Calypso Fitness Club. "While looking for a tenant for this unit we considered various options, such as a shop that would not generate a lot of footfall - a car showroom, for example. It is common knowledge that retail rents are higher than office rents. However, I trusted my instincts when I was negotiating with the nursery school operator. I know that there are a lot of facilities of this type operating in business parks in Israel, where Adgar originates from, as well as in the complexes of the global giants in Silicon Valley, so why would it not succeed in Warsaw? When Jacek Wawer of Pomarańczowa Ciuchcia came along, I had no doubts. These were some of my fastest negotiations, lasting half an hour. We signed a deal a week later," recalls Eyal Litwin.

"Office building owners and managers are usually intrigued by the idea of opening a pre-school in their office buildings. Naturally questions arise over the special requirements the premises should fulfil, but most areas can be adapted for this type of use. The issue of rent levels is also significant because this cannot be as high as in the case of a retail lease. However, owners try to make concessions for the sake of the added value that a nursery school near a workplace undoubtedly brings," comments Grzegorz Kmieciński of the office department of Colliers international, which is helping Centrum Rozwoju Dziecka to find suitable locations. The owner of the Kids&Co brand is currently in negotiations with the tenants and the facility manager of a complex located in the city's Włochy district as well as the owners of a few existing buildings and those under construction in Mokotów and of a few newly-built premises outside the capital, i.e. in Wrocław, Poznań and Kraków. "Next year we are planning to open five or six kindergartens in office buildings, including three available to all tenants and two or three for one company.. Nurseries make economic sense when you have at least 300 employees," claims Karina Trafna.

Working mum
The idea for opening such nursery schools was borne out of necessity. Karina Trafna opened her first nursery school - Kraina Czarów in Warsaw's Bielany district - in September 2006, when she became a mum and faced the dilemma of who should take care of her child. "I have two daughters. My idea, which I had earlier seen in Western Europe, was to provide a service for working parents. I wanted to make their lives easier. For example, when stuck in a traffic jam they should not have to worry about being late to pick up their kid or failing to deliver him or her on time. This is how the idea of opening a nursery school in an office building was born," explains Magda Helwing, who opened the Miasteczko Dzieci nursery school in the City Gate office building on ul. Ogrodowa in Warsaw. The kindergarten has an area of 300 sqm and takes care of app. 50 toddlers. "I know there are other nursery schools of this type being opened now, but I was the pioneer in Poland," says Ms Helwing. City Gate, like WTT, has many years behind it and it is precisely such buildings (due to the fact that the list of its tenants and the number of people who work there is well-known) that are attractive to pre-school operators. On the other hand, sometimes it is easier to negotiate with the developer of a new project at the construction stage. "As an investor we want to have a nursery school here, because apart from catering facilities and basic service points - like a cash machine, dry cleaner or newsagent - it is one of the most needed additions for tenants. Our architectural and technical teams are able to prepare an area according to all the requirements for such use. We are currently in advanced negotiations with one Warsaw nursery school chain. At the beginning of this year we carried out a survey of people working in the office park, the results of which showed that the tenants do have a need for such services," reveals Katarzyna Szumańska-Kalisz, the marketing and PR coordinator of UBM, the joint developer with CA Immo of the huge Poleczki Business Park complex in southern Warsaw (where eventually an area of 200,000 sqm will be built, of which two 66,000 sqm stages have been finished so far). Another developer, SwedeCenter, which is building Business Park Warszawa near the city airport, has also expressed an interest in the idea. However, the company is only planning to open a nursery after the final stage of the project.

Jana Vlková
director of the office agency and real estate management services at Colliers International, Prague
Child care for Bohemians
The specific issue in the Czech Republic is the current baby boom, which has resulted in a shortage of standard places in state-owned kindergartens. Company or project schools, therefore, ?are also helping to complement a state system of pre-school education that is not sufficient and unable to react quickly enough to such changes in society.

The issue of company kindergartens in the Czech Republic has now come under the spotlight, therefore the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Labour ?and Social Affairs are preparing to reform the existing law to simplify set-up procedures and allow tax reductions for companies supporting this concept. ?Company nurseries have operated in the Czech Republic since around 2009, and one of the first to use it as an additional benefit for their employees was Raiffeisenbank.

Ewa Andrzejewska