Cut-throat market
Hala Mirowska tries to manage changes in retail, neighborhoodPigs' feet, streaked with dried, brown blood from that morning's slaughter, lie on a white counter. "It's fresh, it's cheap, how much you want?" cries the stocky peasant woman, her white T-shirt stained with blood.
"Meat! Check it out!" yells another seller. On his counter lie several large cow livers, dark brown and with a glossy sheen, piled one on top of the other like three plump throw-pillows. On the ground is a white plastic bucket, full of severed pigs' heads.
At Hala Mirowska, a giant indoor/outdoor market on Aleja Jana Pawla, small traders such as these have been coming to sell fresh fruits, vegetables, meat and poultry for 100 years. But as high-rise office buildings begin to surround the market on nearly every side and hypermarkets sprout up in Warsaw's suburbs, some wonder if the market can survive in its current incarnation.
"The market needs to evolve and adapt," said Ian Elliot, retail director for Central and Eastern Europe at developer Jones Lang Lasalle in Warsaw. "If it doesn't progress with the other retail forms coming in, then it won't survive."
Not that the future is entirely bleak.
"These kinds of markets do have a place in the retail hierarchy," Elliot said. "Our research calculates that 50,000 people live within a six-minute walk of Hala Mirowska - that's a massive density.
"The question is whether the market is serving its population well, its customers tend to be older people, so the retail offer has to account for that, by having more drugstores, for example," he added. "But at the same time, that neighborhood is changing, new housing is going in and younger people are moving in, so the market has to evolve along with the neighborhood."
Ellbieta Niska, the market's director, feels the situation isn't as dire as some may suggest. While improvements are needed, the market's mission should stay the same: to serve cheap goods to neighborhood residents.
And she asserts that although the face of the area is changing, Hala Mirowska will remain a constant.
"The market is staying," Niska said. "Hala Mirowska will not disappear."
Her words are more than just boosterism: Hala Mirowska's building is a registered landmark and therefore protected by the city's monuments conservation office.
The market occupies a 7,500 square meter market hall (Hala Mirowska) with a supermarket and 60 small shops inside. It also owns a strip of land next to the building where there are 60 outdoor market stalls, mostly selling fresh vegetables, fruit and meat. Today Hala Mirowska is owned by a cooperative with about 1,000 members, Niska said. Behind Hala Mirowska is an identical market hall called Hala Gwardii, which is owned by Gmina Centrum. It houses a Marcpol supermarket and also has a strip of land next door where there are more outdoor stalls.
While the market is a landmark, it may be a case of tilting at windmills to say that change is not in the air.
Across from the market is the new T.G.I. Friday's restaurant in the Atrium Plaza, south of this construction is underway on the Atrium Centrum and below this is the Atrium Tower and Atrium. On the same side of Aleje Jana Pawla, south of ulica Grzybowska, construction will soon start on a new Hilton Hotel and another Atrium office and retail building, which together will be called Atrium South. On the same side of the street as the market, but south of it, the La Tour project is under construction.
Property developers believe that in a few years, this part of town will be Warsaw's "central business district."
As such, they believe the market will have to evolve if it is to capture the new businesses, and consumers, that will flood the area. One strategy Hala Mirowska could take is to specialize in the higher end of the retail market, property agents said.
"Markets like this thrive in Spain and Portugal, because people know they can get the best, freshest fruits, herbs and spices," Elliot said. "They have to offer something that is different and of better quality than people can find in a hypermarket. Hala Mirowska can't compete selling tins of baked beans and cornflakes, the hypermarkets will kill them."
That sentiment is shared by the market's new competitors, such as Leclerc, which in April opened a 9,000 square meter hypermarket on Aleje Jerozolimskie in Wlochy. The store can be reached in about 15 minutes from the central train station using a free Leclerc shuttle bus, putting it a mere 10 minutes further out than Hala Mirowska.
"We are the generalists," said Lidia Zelechowska, deputy assistant to Roland Lorentz, Leclerc's president. "They should be specialists."
While some may find Hala Mirowska charming for its open stalls and turn-of-the-century architecture, hypermarkets are luring shoppers with abundant parking, clean, modern interiors and a wider range of cheap products. And they will put increasing pressure on Hala Mirowska if it wants to play on the same field as them. By the end of 1998, there were 10 hypermarkets in Warsaw out of 36 nationwide and by the end of this year eight more are expected to open in the capital, according to Grzegorz Ejchart, a project manager at market research firm CAL Company Assistance.
Over the next three years, 50,000-60,000 square meters of supermarket and hypermarket space is expected to come on line annually in Warsaw, according to Janusz Allina, director of retail at real estate firm Couderq & Kubas.
There are abundant examples of how Hala Mirowska could specialize and revitalize itself, real estate agents said.
"(Hala Mirowska) could become something like Covent Gardens in London," said Sean Briggs, a partner at Healey and Baker responsible for retail. "It used to be an old flea market, but now it's full of cafes, boutiques, restaurants and little specialty shops. It may be too early yet in Warsaw for something like that, but in due course there will be interest in it."
The market could also consider branching out into niches other than food, Elliot said. "They should change their offerings: On Sunday no one goes there, so why don't they have an antique market or a clothes market," he added. "It's all a question of making best use of the space."
Incremental change
Niska and the market are of a different mind. She said the market should not change even if its surroundings do. "Hala Mirowska has been a place where cheap goods have been available since 1901," Niska said. "We sell food, staples, the necessities. Exclusive goods have no chance of being sold here."
That is not to say the market has put blinders on to the reality of today's retail market, Niska said. The market is changing its appearance and structure, if not its overall strategy. Niska oversaw a renovation of the market hall in October 1998, replacing the roof of the red brick, neo-historical-style building with modern-looking glass and steel. The wiring, plumbing and heating were all redone, and the interior was modernized with new cash registers, freezers and shelves.
In addition, Gmina Centrum authorities have just finished building 90 new, modern market stalls outside, with running water and electric heating. Half the new market stalls were built on land owned by Hala Mirowska, and under an agreement with Gmina Centrum, ownership of these stalls will be transferred to the cooperative, Niska said.
"You see the investment we are putting in," Niska said. She would not say, however, if this has helped to boost turnover on the market. Nor would she give detailed sales figures for the market. "Judge for yourself how business is going," Niska said.
The new market stalls are due to open this month and are located between Hala Mirowska and Hala Gwardii.
Hala Mirowska's next challenge is to crack down on the unlicensed trading that goes on outside its doors, on property administered by the municipal departments of roads and public spaces.
On any given day, hundreds of these unlicensed vendors can be seen selling old books, socks, wooden shoes, socket-wrench sets and anything else imaginable. One tall, thin man wearing a T-shirt, shorts and a "Los Angeles '69ers" baseball cap, stood proudly behind his wares, which he'd lain out on a woolen blanket on the ground: three battered tin toy cars, an old portable radio, and a stack of gray, moldy paperbacks. Behind him, affixed to the wall of Hala Mirowska, was a sign reading, "Vending Prohibited."
"We have to get rid of the street sellers," Niska said. "They are dirty and ugly. In a normal, civilized country, you don't find these kinds of sellers next to stores."
Police in groups of three or four can often be seen patrolling the surrounding streets and sidewalks, but for every old woman selling garlic from strands wrapped around her neck who they persuade to move along, three more are waiting to take her place.
"The police can't do anything about it," Niska said. "It would take 50 policemen on permanent duty to stop all the unlicensed selling going on outside."
Niska has heard about new Warsaw Mayor Pawel Piskorski's plan to crack down on unlicensed vending in the city, and thinks it is having some improvement. "The situation here is far closer to being solved than over by the Palace of Culture," Niska said.
But small structural improvements and cracking down on illegal selling are only the first steps the market will need to take if it is to match the competition that is intensifying, retail analysts said.
Don't rush change
But not everyone wants to see Hala Mirowska undertake a major strategic change. Some believe a fix could do more harm than good.
"There used to be a similar market on ulica Polna (near Metro Politechnika)," said Mariola Wiacek-Gasior, a project manager at CAL Company Assistance. "It had an old leaky roof but lots of charm; expats liked to shop there. Then they decided to develop it into a modern building - and it's a flop."
In addition, Hala Mirowska may not be directly threatened by hypermarkets, Wiacek-Gasior said, because people who shop at hypermarkets "were never the kind of people who might shop at Hala Mirowska."
Market shoppers tend to be older retirees, she said, the truth of which is born out by simple observation on any visit to the market.
And those doing business at the market aren't feeling a competitive pinch that would have them clamoring for change.
One vendor, a shy, older woman who is said to be one of the market's most senior vendors, laughed at the suggestion that someone would prefer to shop at a hypermarket.
"We've got the best meat you can find. It's freshly killed this morning," said the woman, dressed in a blood-stained white smock with tattered sleeves, as she dexterously flipped a sharp carving knife from hand to hand.
She and her husband, who didn't want to give their names, wake up at 2:30 a.m. each morning on their farm 100 kilometers from Warsaw and take their day's supplies of freshly slaughtered pork and beef to their market stall next to Hala Mirowska. They arrive at the market by 5:30 a.m. and work until 6 p.m. or 7 p.m., then drive back to the farm, the woman said. "They don't give money for free," the woman said, utterly unbothered by the arduous schedule.
"It's cheaper here than in the hypermarket too," the woman added. Toward evening, when there is some unsold stock left over that won't keep until the next day, regular customers can even sometimes get a "present" from the woman or other meat vendors, she said. "Do they do that in a hypermarket?" she asked.
"Meat! Check it out!" yells another seller. On his counter lie several large cow livers, dark brown and with a glossy sheen, piled one on top of the other like three plump throw-pillows. On the ground is a white plastic bucket, full of severed pigs' heads.
At Hala Mirowska, a giant indoor/outdoor market on Aleja Jana Pawla, small traders such as these have been coming to sell fresh fruits, vegetables, meat and poultry for 100 years. But as high-rise office buildings begin to surround the market on nearly every side and hypermarkets sprout up in Warsaw's suburbs, some wonder if the market can survive in its current incarnation.
"The market needs to evolve and adapt," said Ian Elliot, retail director for Central and Eastern Europe at developer Jones Lang Lasalle in Warsaw. "If it doesn't progress with the other retail forms coming in, then it won't survive."
Not that the future is entirely bleak.
"These kinds of markets do have a place in the retail hierarchy," Elliot said. "Our research calculates that 50,000 people live within a six-minute walk of Hala Mirowska - that's a massive density.
"The question is whether the market is serving its population well, its customers tend to be older people, so the retail offer has to account for that, by having more drugstores, for example," he added. "But at the same time, that neighborhood is changing, new housing is going in and younger people are moving in, so the market has to evolve along with the neighborhood."
Ellbieta Niska, the market's director, feels the situation isn't as dire as some may suggest. While improvements are needed, the market's mission should stay the same: to serve cheap goods to neighborhood residents.
And she asserts that although the face of the area is changing, Hala Mirowska will remain a constant.
"The market is staying," Niska said. "Hala Mirowska will not disappear."
Her words are more than just boosterism: Hala Mirowska's building is a registered landmark and therefore protected by the city's monuments conservation office.
The market occupies a 7,500 square meter market hall (Hala Mirowska) with a supermarket and 60 small shops inside. It also owns a strip of land next to the building where there are 60 outdoor market stalls, mostly selling fresh vegetables, fruit and meat. Today Hala Mirowska is owned by a cooperative with about 1,000 members, Niska said. Behind Hala Mirowska is an identical market hall called Hala Gwardii, which is owned by Gmina Centrum. It houses a Marcpol supermarket and also has a strip of land next door where there are more outdoor stalls.
While the market is a landmark, it may be a case of tilting at windmills to say that change is not in the air.
Across from the market is the new T.G.I. Friday's restaurant in the Atrium Plaza, south of this construction is underway on the Atrium Centrum and below this is the Atrium Tower and Atrium. On the same side of Aleje Jana Pawla, south of ulica Grzybowska, construction will soon start on a new Hilton Hotel and another Atrium office and retail building, which together will be called Atrium South. On the same side of the street as the market, but south of it, the La Tour project is under construction.
Property developers believe that in a few years, this part of town will be Warsaw's "central business district."
As such, they believe the market will have to evolve if it is to capture the new businesses, and consumers, that will flood the area. One strategy Hala Mirowska could take is to specialize in the higher end of the retail market, property agents said.
"Markets like this thrive in Spain and Portugal, because people know they can get the best, freshest fruits, herbs and spices," Elliot said. "They have to offer something that is different and of better quality than people can find in a hypermarket. Hala Mirowska can't compete selling tins of baked beans and cornflakes, the hypermarkets will kill them."
That sentiment is shared by the market's new competitors, such as Leclerc, which in April opened a 9,000 square meter hypermarket on Aleje Jerozolimskie in Wlochy. The store can be reached in about 15 minutes from the central train station using a free Leclerc shuttle bus, putting it a mere 10 minutes further out than Hala Mirowska.
"We are the generalists," said Lidia Zelechowska, deputy assistant to Roland Lorentz, Leclerc's president. "They should be specialists."
While some may find Hala Mirowska charming for its open stalls and turn-of-the-century architecture, hypermarkets are luring shoppers with abundant parking, clean, modern interiors and a wider range of cheap products. And they will put increasing pressure on Hala Mirowska if it wants to play on the same field as them. By the end of 1998, there were 10 hypermarkets in Warsaw out of 36 nationwide and by the end of this year eight more are expected to open in the capital, according to Grzegorz Ejchart, a project manager at market research firm CAL Company Assistance.
Over the next three years, 50,000-60,000 square meters of supermarket and hypermarket space is expected to come on line annually in Warsaw, according to Janusz Allina, director of retail at real estate firm Couderq & Kubas.
There are abundant examples of how Hala Mirowska could specialize and revitalize itself, real estate agents said.
"(Hala Mirowska) could become something like Covent Gardens in London," said Sean Briggs, a partner at Healey and Baker responsible for retail. "It used to be an old flea market, but now it's full of cafes, boutiques, restaurants and little specialty shops. It may be too early yet in Warsaw for something like that, but in due course there will be interest in it."
The market could also consider branching out into niches other than food, Elliot said. "They should change their offerings: On Sunday no one goes there, so why don't they have an antique market or a clothes market," he added. "It's all a question of making best use of the space."
Incremental change
Niska and the market are of a different mind. She said the market should not change even if its surroundings do. "Hala Mirowska has been a place where cheap goods have been available since 1901," Niska said. "We sell food, staples, the necessities. Exclusive goods have no chance of being sold here."
That is not to say the market has put blinders on to the reality of today's retail market, Niska said. The market is changing its appearance and structure, if not its overall strategy. Niska oversaw a renovation of the market hall in October 1998, replacing the roof of the red brick, neo-historical-style building with modern-looking glass and steel. The wiring, plumbing and heating were all redone, and the interior was modernized with new cash registers, freezers and shelves.
In addition, Gmina Centrum authorities have just finished building 90 new, modern market stalls outside, with running water and electric heating. Half the new market stalls were built on land owned by Hala Mirowska, and under an agreement with Gmina Centrum, ownership of these stalls will be transferred to the cooperative, Niska said.
"You see the investment we are putting in," Niska said. She would not say, however, if this has helped to boost turnover on the market. Nor would she give detailed sales figures for the market. "Judge for yourself how business is going," Niska said.
The new market stalls are due to open this month and are located between Hala Mirowska and Hala Gwardii.
Hala Mirowska's next challenge is to crack down on the unlicensed trading that goes on outside its doors, on property administered by the municipal departments of roads and public spaces.
On any given day, hundreds of these unlicensed vendors can be seen selling old books, socks, wooden shoes, socket-wrench sets and anything else imaginable. One tall, thin man wearing a T-shirt, shorts and a "Los Angeles '69ers" baseball cap, stood proudly behind his wares, which he'd lain out on a woolen blanket on the ground: three battered tin toy cars, an old portable radio, and a stack of gray, moldy paperbacks. Behind him, affixed to the wall of Hala Mirowska, was a sign reading, "Vending Prohibited."
"We have to get rid of the street sellers," Niska said. "They are dirty and ugly. In a normal, civilized country, you don't find these kinds of sellers next to stores."
Police in groups of three or four can often be seen patrolling the surrounding streets and sidewalks, but for every old woman selling garlic from strands wrapped around her neck who they persuade to move along, three more are waiting to take her place.
"The police can't do anything about it," Niska said. "It would take 50 policemen on permanent duty to stop all the unlicensed selling going on outside."
Niska has heard about new Warsaw Mayor Pawel Piskorski's plan to crack down on unlicensed vending in the city, and thinks it is having some improvement. "The situation here is far closer to being solved than over by the Palace of Culture," Niska said.
But small structural improvements and cracking down on illegal selling are only the first steps the market will need to take if it is to match the competition that is intensifying, retail analysts said.
Don't rush change
But not everyone wants to see Hala Mirowska undertake a major strategic change. Some believe a fix could do more harm than good.
"There used to be a similar market on ulica Polna (near Metro Politechnika)," said Mariola Wiacek-Gasior, a project manager at CAL Company Assistance. "It had an old leaky roof but lots of charm; expats liked to shop there. Then they decided to develop it into a modern building - and it's a flop."
In addition, Hala Mirowska may not be directly threatened by hypermarkets, Wiacek-Gasior said, because people who shop at hypermarkets "were never the kind of people who might shop at Hala Mirowska."
Market shoppers tend to be older retirees, she said, the truth of which is born out by simple observation on any visit to the market.
And those doing business at the market aren't feeling a competitive pinch that would have them clamoring for change.
One vendor, a shy, older woman who is said to be one of the market's most senior vendors, laughed at the suggestion that someone would prefer to shop at a hypermarket.
"We've got the best meat you can find. It's freshly killed this morning," said the woman, dressed in a blood-stained white smock with tattered sleeves, as she dexterously flipped a sharp carving knife from hand to hand.
She and her husband, who didn't want to give their names, wake up at 2:30 a.m. each morning on their farm 100 kilometers from Warsaw and take their day's supplies of freshly slaughtered pork and beef to their market stall next to Hala Mirowska. They arrive at the market by 5:30 a.m. and work until 6 p.m. or 7 p.m., then drive back to the farm, the woman said. "They don't give money for free," the woman said, utterly unbothered by the arduous schedule.
"It's cheaper here than in the hypermarket too," the woman added. Toward evening, when there is some unsold stock left over that won't keep until the next day, regular customers can even sometimes get a "present" from the woman or other meat vendors, she said. "Do they do that in a hypermarket?" she asked.
