A paler shade of blue

You probably know it as Reform Center - that great black and white monstrosity that sits half finished on Aleje Jerozolimskie, collecting dust and regular jibes from the Polish press.
Well, come November, this Turkish investment will be relaunched with the name Blue City under an ambitious plan by a group of U.S. and Swiss investors to turn it into a giant leisure and retail center. The investors, who purchased 51% of the Turkish Reform Company, which also owns the nearby Reform Plaza office building, for an undisclosed sum in May, plan to spend about $50 million to transform the site into Blue City.
"It's going to be the most amazing shopping center in Warsaw," said Yoram Reshef, who was poached from his position as director at the Galeria Mokotów shopping mall to become president of the 85,000-square-meter Blue City project. A team of U.S. architects, including Ed Jenkins, who worked on designing Galeria Mokotów, will direct the project.
In addition to more than 3,000 square meters of entertainment and leisure, which will be created by a well-known international company, according to Reshef, Blue City will also house a 200-room three-star hotel, top-end retailers and possibly even office space, a supermarket and a 3,000-square-meter gym. Two floors may also be converted to additional parking space due to insufficient parking in the center's original plans, while work will continue on an auto access tunnel running beneath Aleje Jerozolimskie.
"If it's done well, it will be successful," said Tatiana Siemieniuk, an associate director in the retail department of real estate marketing company, Jones Lang LaSalle, who has seen Blue City's plans.

Black History
Ever since the construction of Reform Center began in 1997, it has been plagued by rumor and innuendo - everything from criticism of its design and gigantic size to questions about the marketing plans of its Turkish owners.
From the beginning, Reform Company failed to heed good advice on the design and marketing of Reform Center, according to James Foley, a partner at Ernst & Young who oversees real estate consulting, and a former adviser in the building's sale negotiations.
"This (the design and marketing advice) should have all taken place during predevelopment, and information about preleasing space was virtually nonexistent," Foley said.
Instead, he said, "they ended up with a secondary product without a good concept or a thoughtful marketing strategy. Add to that poor construction management and you have an empty, half-built structure."
Foley said many of these errors could be corrected, and that the new management seemed to be making significant progress.
"What they do have going for them is a good location, fresh capital and some fresh ideas," he said. "But it still won't be easy."
Had Reform Center opened on schedule in late 2000, Foley said it would have been perfect timing to attract retailers, but now with Wola Park open, plus the Arkadia and Złote Tarasy malls coming soon, Reform Center will need to find its own market niche.
He added that this extra retail space along with slowing retail turnover have given retailers greater power to negotiate lower rents and more concessions. By Foley's estimates, landlords today can easily spend up to €100 per meter in concessions to the retailers.
However, the days of the super malls in Poland are over. Last year, changes made to national planning laws placed additional restrictions on all new retail investments larger than 2,000 square meters.
"The idea of the law is to help small retailers survive," said Marek Mikos, the deputy director of town planning and architecture at the Warsaw Central Borough. He added that these new changes also help regulate road usage and public transport routes, which can be affected by traffic flows to large shopping malls on the edges of cities.
The new work to transform Reform Center into Blue City is expected to be completed by the end of 2003.