Trouble in store

The ground floors of many new housing projects are designated commercial areas. however, sometimes residents are dissatisfied with what they have to offer. so it is worth taking their needs into account as early as the design stage – especially as we are still waiting for the good times to return to the residential market
Zuzanna Wiak

this summer, Spanish company Restaura completed the development of an apartment building on ul. Górskiego in central Warsaw. The project offers 108 apartments, some priced as high as PLN 38,000 per sqm, but with 700 sqm of the commercial space also being sold at PLN 7,000–14,000 per sqm. You might think that this is an ideal place for opening a modern sushi bar or a luxury wine shop. However, the developer decided at the design stage that it would have no restaurants or bars. “There should be no restaurants in this residential project because they come to life when we come back home tired and want to have a rest,” argues Paweł Augustyn, the managing director of Restaura in Poland. For this reason the commercial areas in the apartment building do not have the technical infrastructure required for such businesses. However, it is not only restaurants that are not welcome on ul. Górskiego. “I cannot imagine an alcohol store opening in our project. Such a business might disturb the peace of the residents. There are a lot of other services which can be provided in this type of building, such as a dental surgery or a spa salon. In some sales contracts for the commercial areas we have included a special clause stipulating that a catering business should not be opened there,” he adds. There is one unit currently occupied in the building – an artist\'s studio. But the developer no longer has to worry about selling the commercial areas since out of the nine units available only one is still unsold.
A service desert
Restaura’s project is located in the city centre, with convenient access to shops, services and eateries. However, the situation is completely different when a project is built on the outskirts. The best and at the same time the worst example of this is Warsaw’s Miasteczko Wilanów, where services for residents started to appear only a few years after the project began. The biggest change will take place once a shopping centre, which has been promised for years, is finally built. Polnord and Globe Trade Centre are currently working on such a project. “People who choose an apartment appreciate the availability of a baker, a newsagent or a small local shop where they can buy fresh bread, the morning papers or basic food products, without the need to drive out some distance to a crowded supermarket,” claims Andrzej Nizio, the president of the management board at the development company Marvipol. To this he adds that: “A restaurant or a café might also be very convenient for the residents, who could meet their friends for supper or coffee near their homes. Still, it is necessary to arrange a catering area in a suitable way – a good layout for the back rooms, efficient ventilation – in order to make them as bother-free as possible. At first sight it might seem that the proximity of a few banks and insurance agencies would be less bothersome, but in a long run it often turns out that a lack of shops or gastronomic premises, i.e. places for social interaction, begins to irritate the residents more and more.” Also, the size of a project has an influence on the number and the variety of commercial areas. “We plan to have gastronomic premises in our project on ul. Szwedzka. Together with around 1,000 apartments, a commercial area is to be provided of app. 3,000. We have to provide our residents with access to services in such a big project in a place like the Praga Północ district. In projects of this type with more than  500 apartments services are necessary for making the project work well,” says Paweł Augustyn of Restaura.
A survey might help?
Gant Development, the developer of the Kaskada project in Warsaw’s Wola district, is to build  570 apartments and a commercial area of as much as 6,000 sqm in its first stage. In order to find out the best way to use this area, the developer has put a questionnaire on its website for future apartment owners and the residents living in the neighbourhood. “We want our survey, which is to be carried out over another three months, to include the views of several thousand people,” reveals  Dariusz Wilk from the marketing department of Gant Development. What you need to do to take part in the survey is to go to the website of the company, where you can find the layout of the commercial area of the facility, and then mark the places where you think service outlets, food and health shops, eateries and other such locales should be situated. The developer has already used the internet as a marketing tool in an innovative way when it was the first on the residential market to set up a ‘Name Your Price’ service on its website during the credit crunch.
In black and white
“Our survey has a client-oriented and society-oriented character, but it also comprises a business element. When the results of the survey are available to us, we will be able to prepare an offer that is aimed at future buyers of the apartments,” adds Dariusz Wilk. The company is not planning to design sales contracts in such a way to order or forbid any type of business activities. However, it will publish the results of the survey at the sales stage to make future buyers aware of the expectations of the residents in the neighbourhood, which should make the commercial element more appropriate in the future. “When we have the results of the survey, we will see in black and white where the residents expect a baker and a hairdresser to be,” explains Mr Wilk. However, sometimes it is not possible to satisfy all the clients even after considerable effort. During the development of a number of its projects, Gant Development included nursery schools in the designs. For some this represented added value. However, this idea was not appealing to other potential residents, who worried that it would lead to more noise within the area of the project.