WBJ: Warsaw’s Wola has become one of the Polish capital’s office hotspots in recent years. When you were establishing your presence in the district over a decade ago, was it clear that the location would attract tenants?
Jeroen van der Toolen: Well, our decision to focus on Wola was, in a sense, risky, but it was a calculated risk. A decade ago, most office developers in Warsaw – including us – were concentrated on either the Mokotów district or the CBD. However, neither location had the potential to house truly ambitious projects that would offer a bit more than just office space. Warsaw had no proper center at that time – the new office towers in the CBD were isolated islands, surrounded by older buildings and cut off by major roads.

Meanwhile, Wola – with its planned subway line and a lot of available land – seemed the perfect place to launch large-scale schemes which would also include attractive public areas and would transform entire neighborhoods. We knew that the city center would, in a natural way, expand westwards and this is now happening. We started to accumulate land in the Rondo Daszyńskiego area of Wola more than ten years ago. Since then, many other developers have bought sites there.

In 2011, in the new location, you launched a project with some 100,000 sqm of GLA...
When we were starting to build Warsaw Spire, many people in the market doubted whether such a big project could be successfully commercialized. Just a few years had passed since the outbreak of the global financial crisis and no new office schemes of this scale had been launched in Warsaw since the completion of Rondo 1 in 2006. We decided to invest in the latest technologies to attract innovative companies from such sectors as IT who are usually the first to move to new locations. That worked – we secured Samsung and others followed.

Wola has become so popular with office developers in recent years that some fear it could be turned into another Służewiec – the business area of Mokotów that has long been notorious for its office monoculture. Do you see such fears as justified?
I think that Wola has every chance of developing as a properly planned location with many urban functions. The Rondo Daszyńskiego area has already attracted a number of new residential projects and a big shopping center is expected to be built there in the near future. The much-visited Warsaw Uprising Museum is located in the neighborhood. The area is vibrant after office hours and it will be even more so in a few years once more new commercial and residential projects have been completed.

You are currently developing your The Warsaw Hub mixed-use project near Rondo Daszyńskiego, which will comprise even more leasable space than Warsaw Spire. How is the commercialization of the scheme going?
Demand for office space in Warsaw is today stronger than ever and we are seeing lots of tenant interest in this project. The overall leasing level at The Warsaw Hub – including both office space and hotel and retail areas – currently stands at between 35 and 40 percent.

Some of the tenants who are leasing office space in Wola these days used to be in non-central locations in Warsaw with substantially lower rents. What is the reason for their changed preferences?
This trend results, for the most part, from the current situation in the labor market. It is an employee’s market and young people today want to work in nice locations with good transport infrastructure. They do not want to waste time being stuck in traffic jams. If they want to stay competitive and attract and retain the best talent, companies – or at least those which can afford it – often need to rethink their office space leasing strategies, even if that means slightly higher rent costs.

What is the status of your next office project in the area – Spinnaker – that will be located across the road from The Warsaw Hub? You have not officially announced the launch of the scheme yet, but the underground floors of the tower are almost ready…
We have decided to build the underground floors of the skyscraper now, even though we are currently focused on the commercialization of The Warsaw Hub. No completion date has been set for Spinnaker yet and we are not offering small or medium-sized office areas in the tower at this moment. But if an anchor tenant with a very large office requirement comes to us, we will be able to complete the skyscraper for them relatively quickly.

Do you have any other sites in Wola that you will develop in the coming years?
We have land for four other high-rise projects in the Rondo Daszyńskiego area, but I cannot reveal their exact locations yet. We prefer to talk about our development plans when building permits are in place.

How long can the office boom in Wola continue in terms of the availability of sites?
As for the Rondo Daszyńskiego area, in five years’ time most sites will likely be developed. Developers will then probably focus on plots located between Rondo Daszyńskiego and Rondo ONZ, as well as on land located a bit farther north of Warsaw’s second subway line.