"The expansion of the companies headquartered in West Gate was the main trend noticed in the last years. For instance, in the last two years only, tenants such as Ericsson, Dacia Renault, WNS, Societe Generale, Accenture and Carestream Health have expanded their areas with a total of approx. 15,000 sq. m of offices. We are constantly trying to meet such requests, including by keeping a vacant office area. It is known the fact that one of the reasons for a tenant decides to relocate is the impossibility of expansion in its current quarters", explained Liviu Tudor for Mediafax.
Considering that an office building in West Gate complex has around 15,000 sq. m, the companies expansions would have covered an entire building. “According to the tenants’ requests we will decide when and how we will expand the West Gate office park. We have developed five buildings with a total rentable office area of 75,000 sq. m and we have available plot for as many, but the pace depends exclusively by the pre-rents situation. I still consider that in our case a minimum of 80 pct. is necessary in order to take the decision of starting a new building", Tudor mentioned.
He showed that there are signs of certain tenants in West Gate which intend to expand in the next period, but he said that is prematurely to give details on the subject for now.
The West and Centre-West area started to be targeted more and more by the office buildings developers, as an alternative to the established areas by far for these investments, such as Barbu-Vacarescu, Pipera or Piata Victoriei. The real estate consultants estimate that only in the Centre-Western Bucharest, near the underground station of Politehnica, Semanatoarea or Grozavesti, office projects of more than 150,000 sq. m could be developed in the next years.
"The development of the Western Bucharest, from the point of view of the modern office buildings started in the period of 2004-2005, with the construction of the West Gatefirst and the largest business park in the area. In that period, Genesis Development was already delivering the first buildings within Novo Park, situated in Pipera, a non-central area where the largest office stock in Bucharest was delivered by far. We started from the premise that the Western zone is one very populated and very many employees, especially young people, are living in Militari, Drumul Taberei and Crangasi districts. IT is natural for these persons to have their offices me and office, namely the time spent in traffic, being usually a decisive factor in choosing the working places", Tudor also said.
Moreover, the proximity o the Polytechnics University, where over 20,000 students are studying, is a significant advantage for the tenant companies, considering that in the last years the young people started to work during university studies, the businessman also considers.
Currently, in West Gate office park there are approx. 8,000 employees working, a similar number of persons having their offices in the other buildings in the Western zone, namely in Semanatoarea and Politehnica areas. "The main advantages of the Western zone for the companies choose to relocate their offices are the available labour, the infrastructure and the easy access with public transportation and of course the equitable ratio between the quality of the office spaces and the rents. The tenants’ expansions as well as the new projects started in the Western zone show we were right ten years ago when we started the development of the West Gate complex. Certainly in the next five to ten years the zone will continue to develop, considering large plots are available, with a very good access", Tudor also showed. In his opinion, the zone has all the ingredients for development, including the tenants’ appetite and the infrastructure, it only remains that the developers to conceive the right product, the one that the market needs.
Tudor has developed through the company Genesis Development the office complexes Novo Park and West Park, totaling 150,000 sq. m, as well as the West Gate Studios campus, including 925 studios and apartments destined to rental. The investments made by the company in Romania exceeded EUR 300 million and the revenues from rents obtained from the three projects reached EUR 32 million annually. (source: wall-street.ro)
