Strong office development activity matched by rising demand – JLL

Office development activity continues across the country, triggered by sound occupier demand both in Warsaw and in the key office hubs outside the capital city. In Q3 130,000 sqm of new office space was completed in Poland. In Warsaw, Q3 saw the completion of four office blocks: Warsaw Spire B (20,000 sqm), Nimbus (19,000 sqm), Małachowskiego Square (12,000 sqm), and Garden Plaza (8,500 sqm). “Construction activity in Warsaw remains high. In Q3, the total modern office stock amounted to almost 4,365,000 sq m and developers have announced completions of another 90,000 sq m in Q4 2014. Almost 640,000 sq m is in the construction stage across the city, which will be fairly evenly delivered to the market in 2015 and 2016. An increasingly important trend is the refurbishment of older office properties to enhance their position in an increasingly competitive Warsaw market. At the moment, almost 60,000 sq m of office space is under refurbishment,” said Anna Młyniec, head of Office Agency and Tenant Representation, JLL. The largest office projects completed in Q3 outside Warsaw were Kapelanka A (17,300 sqm), Enterprise Park C (13,600 sqm) and Quattro Business Park D (12,200 sqm), all in Kraków. In Q3, tenant demand in Warsaw stood at approximately 163,000 sqm, bringing the total for 2014 up to 422,000 sqm. Tenants were also active on the major office markets outside Warsaw: Kraków, Wrocław, the Tri-City, Katowice, Poznań, Łódź, Szczecin and Lublin. “It was a very good quarter for the office markets outside Warsaw, with approximately 117,000 sqm of modern office space leased in Q3, and a total of 320,000 sq m for the year so far. It is worth noting that this high demand was generated by companies from the business services sector, with examples of HP GBC and Infosys signing very large lease agreements in Wrocław and Łódź,” said Anna Bartoszewicz-Wnuk, head of Research and Consultancy, JLL.