The `Canary Wharf` of Bucharest, the zone where the investors are pumping one billion Euros

In London, apart from City – the traditional business district of the town, there was also developed in the last 30 years, on the initiative of Margaret Thatcher, the project Canary Wharf, real estate complex managed for several years by the Romanian George Iacobescu.

If in London the project was integrated – with infrastructure from scratch, in Bucharest several developers – Austrian, Italian, American, Swedish or Greek – have built or started to develop office projects on the lands brought individually, while in the middle of this area a mall have been completed, with a rentable area of 35,000 sq. m.

Overall, the real estate investment in this area (completed or planned) were estimated by ZF to a billion Euros, EUR 300 million being the budget of Floreasca City project, including Promenada mall, Sky Tower (the tallest building in Bucharest and the country) and another smaller office building, a project developed by Austria’s Raiffeisen Evolution.

Raiffeisen Property, the real estate division of the Austrian group, owns the Sky Tower building, while Promenada mall is in Raiffeisen Evolution’s portfolio, a development company where the bank is also shareholder.

South-Africa’s NEPI paid EUR 160 million in order to buy here two projects - Floreasca Business Park and Lakeview -, office buildings with a rentable area of more than 60,000 sq.m.

The group Portland Trust, headed by the British Robert Neale, has completed recently the project Floreasca Park following EUR 70 million investment, and across the street, over Pipera passage, Nusco family from Italy owns the building Nusco Tower, the current headquarters of Volksbank, developed with an investment of approx. EUR 50 million.

In the same area, Sweden’s Skanska is working for the project Green Court, the first two buildings involving a budget of EUR 80 million, while the Greek businessman Ioannis Papalekas is ready to develop a tower with 23 floors on the plot of the former auto showroom Porsche Aviaţiei, with a budget for this project exceeding EUR 60 million.

The offices on Calea Floreasca are the new “factories” of Bucharest, sad last week during ZF Live Sebastian Mahu, real estate consultant within DTZ Echinox, and considering that in the sector 1 of Bucharest there are only two large factories left, the services offered by the office buildings seam the most suitable development solution.

The industry has developed at the national level, with an important contribution to the GDP growth of 3.5% last year, but the large producers are currently avoiding Bucharest, due to the high costs with labour.

In contrast, Deutsche Bank, Oracle, HP, IBM, Electronic Arts or Huawei find in Bucharest good conditions to develop services centres – employees with foreign languages aptitudes and IT skills – and the office development at competitive prices also represents an important element determining these companies to invest locally. (source: zf.ro)