Another major area is the west of the city, where about 80,000 square meters of office space will be delivered on on a one-kilometer radius on the Timisoara Boulevard, according to the data supplied by real estate consultant JLL to ZF.
“If developers continue as planned, we expect 360,000 square meters of office space to be completed in 2016,” says Andrei Drosu, research&consultancy with JLL.
The biggest projects to be completed in 2016 in Floreasca-Barbu Vacarescu area are Bucharest One (Globalworth), Oregon Park (Portland), Green Court Building C (Skanska) and Gara Herastrau (Globalworth), Andrei Drosu says.
Ziarul Financiar has identified four major office space areas in Bucharest, and the JLL data show about 220,000 square meters will be delivered there this year, which are enough to accommodate 24,000 new jobs. The office space stock in Bucharest increased to 2.3 million square meters in 2015, after 65,000 square meters were delivered last year.
Floreasca-Barbu Vacarescu has become the most important office space hub in the city in the last few years, and its stock of office space reached 315,000 square meters at the end of last year. The subway and the road infrastructure were not designed to handle the current amount of traffic, though.
“The crowding on Barbu Vacarescu does not worry us because Bucharest as a whole is a crowded city and is not worse than in any other areas. It remains to be seen what will happen on the infrastructure side,” said Aurelia Luca, managing director of Skanska Property Romania, which has built and sold two Green Court buildings and is now working on the third.
“The Gara Herastrau (also northern Bucharest i.e.) area has seen some improvement. Some areas are more crowded, some are less crowded, and such problems will persist in the future as in any big city.”
Another important area is the Timisoara Boulevard in western Bucharest, where 80,000 square meters of office space should be completed in the Metropol (Anchor Grup) and AFI Park 4&5 (AFI Europe) this year. In addition, 10,000 square meters will be made available by converting part of the Plaza Romania mall to office space.
“Whether the west of the city experiences the same infrastructure-related problems or not will depend on the development of the area and the involvement of the city hall. Density of office buildings is more compact in the north compared with the projects in the west, which are sparser,” Aurelia Luca says.
Skanska bought some land in the west of the city, too, part of the former Pumac industrial site near the Politehnica subway station, where it will develop office buildings.
Another office space hub is shaping up in the Orhideelor-Basarab Overpass, where only 56,000 square meters of office space are now available and no new building was delivered last year.
“Only one building is announced for delivery in 2016, the first building in the phase three of Sema Park (14,000 square meters), but several projects are in various stages of development so the stock might triple in 2017-2018.”
A fourth area is Piata Victoriei, in the center of the city, where the office space stock has remained constant in the last few years due to the lack of space to accommodate large projects. Two buildings will be delivered in the area in 2016, The Landmark (Proiect Bucuresti) and Aviatorilor 8, a South Africa’s NEPI’s development.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)