Bucharest- skyline transformation 2025 | Globalworth, nurturing the biggest business community in Romania

25 decembrie 2020

6 minute citire

Globalworth brings together around 150 companies in its 16 buildings. More ideas are ready for future endeavours.

What projects from your strategic portfolio will be finalized in 2020-2021 and can be considered an upgrade for the urban structure of the capital?

Globalworth brings together around 150 companies in its 16 buildings, which makes the Globalworth community the biggest business community in Romania. Following the European trend which has seen the middle and upper class migrate towards the northern areas of large cities, we have built this strong community, mostly in the North part of Bucharest, for making it easier for business people to work together. Therefore, we will be offering soon hotel accommodation units exclusively to our office tenants in the Romanian portfolio. By the end of this year, UPGROUND 14 will bring 9 spacious hotel accommodation units within the high-tech residential complex, Upground. Located in the heart of Bucharest’s biggest business community, in Pipera, UPGROUND 14 presents an important advantage: tenants who already live close to their office can now accommodate here their business partners or other key people interested in the business they operate. With more people living, working, meeting in one area in Bucharest, its mission is to create harmonious environments that serve multiple functions, avoiding overcrowding and increasingly heavy traffic as much as possible.

Another highlight for Globalworth Romania is the Globalworth Square construction. We have just announced that the structural frame is completed, so we are one step closer to expanding our portfolio with a new office of the future. Located in the north part of Bucharest as well, the high-tech building will be a place where technological additions perfectly combine with the sustainability.

Specifically, Globalworth Square will use a geothermal system under the slab foundation, capable of considerably reducing the cooling and heating costs of the entire edifice. On top of this, a sophisticated ICE storage system implemented for the first time in Romania will be used for the cooling needs providing further energy savings and flattering the consumption curve during the day. Last but not least, energy consumption will be further supported by the photovoltaic roof. Thus, it will be one of the most technological office spaces in Romania.

The third under construction project is our imposing 1,850 sqm Conference Center within the Globalworth Campus complex. The finishing works have been completed recently. Designed to facilitate the work in the business communities, the conference room will accommodate various events and conferences for the tenants of the office market leader and not only.

The conference center is a ground floor building with mezzanine areas, attached to the Tower 3, with a height level of 2S + P + 14E. Following the high standards of sustainability and the healthy working we have always been recognized for, the building of the conference center is covered with a grassy terrace system. In August 2020, together with Tower 3 of Globalworth Campus, the Conference Center has been awarded BREEAM certificate with a rating of “Excellent”.

PropTech is booming and changing the way we work, interact and live, and the last months made us realize once again how much we need to adapt to new trends. Virtual and augmented reality, smart devices and appliances, digital solutions – they are all made to make our work life easier. The pandemic has also brought and will keep bringing new solutions for efficiency and avoidance of touch when possible. This is why, we have just installed a PropTech access control system in the Globalworth Campus, which automatically displays the elevator to be used – so we eliminated a step and the pressing of the elevator button. All these projects focus on technology and communities.

This is the office of the future, and we, as the leader in office real estate, are happy to build it! We build it with the aim of transforming the office market in Romania into a PropTech market.

Published in an exclusive, investment destination – oriented, market tour: “Bucharest – the skyline transformation by 2025” – Read: here

Which is the height of the towers or of the projects finalized? What position will they occupy in the tallest buildings ranking?

The tallest building in our Romanian portfolio is Globalworth Tower, with a height of 120 metres, occupying the second place in the tallest building ranking in the country. It is followed in the top by Bucharest Tower Center (106 metres), Globalworth Square (80 metres) and Globalworth Plaza (80 metres).

Which are the most important facilities, services, accessible also to the general public, to the small adjacent communities or features that can represent „mini destinations” for recreative, and urban lifestyle activities?

For our communities and urban lifestyle activities, we launched at the beginning of 2019 Globalworth District, the first art & tech district in Romania, which transforms our office buildings into unconventional spaces that host and support art and technology. Globalworth District is about community, about people from our buildings, the wider community, young artists, tech lovers and enthusiasts creating and sharing new experiences. The project is dedicated to the people working in the Globalworth office buildings, being developed in accordance with their passions and need of experimenting the world around them. Globalworth District covers three pillars: MUSIC, VISUAL ART & FASHION, which can be experienced with the help of technology. So far, we held more than 30 indoor and outdoor events in our properties, accessible also to the general public, including exhibitions, concerts, movie nights, attended by over 150,000 people.

Which is your prognosis in terms of real estate development in the capital and new projects until 2025?

The future of real estate until 2025 will evolve differently in several sectors, and we will point out two of these sectors: the office & industrial sectors. The industrial sector will evolve very positively as the increase of the online shopping requires additional storage space. In addition to this, the pandemic indicated the lack of local stock and local production of basic goods so further development of warehouses and small production units will be needed – we foresee several business opportunities in this sector until 2025. For the office market, the role of the workplace hasn’t dramatically changed, but a shift has happened and probably the situation will keep changing for the next 2-3 years. Now, we have many tenants who split their time between working from home and from the corporate office. According to our tenants, it seems that some of them want to work in proximity with others, they need face-to-face interactions, and prefer getting together in person from time to time, in completely safe conditions, of course. Video conferencing can sometimes be a substitute of this, but it’s not always a perfect replacement, and with no offline space, the feeling of belonging to a community and a team can be altered. Furthermore, it depends a lot on the type of activity carried out – we have business partners who simply cannot work from home due to logistics and administrative issues. Working from home and social distancing may be with us for a long time hence affecting how corporates think about their occupational strategy, but we are here to find solutions for a comfortable and safe gradual return to the office.

Which are the main recommendations for the central and especially the local administration to support an international identity and create business potential in the new economic paradigm, for Bucharest, in CEE?

The effects of the pandemic can be compensated by several measures by local and central governments such as:

Infrastructure development and improvement so that we make Romania even more attractive, and strengthen even more the expected rise on the industrial/logistics sector
Stimulus packages for new start-ups, individuals, families, professionals, companies with new ideas etc. We all know that there are a lot of EU funding programmes, but they need to be absorbed quickly and correctly
Incentives for the real estate market such as reliefs from property and other related taxes at least for the period of the decline (i.e. companies to pay real estate related taxes proportionally to the occupancy of the assets etc.).

About Globalworth:

Globalworth is a listed real estate company active in Central and Eastern Europe, quoted on the AIM-segment of the London Stock Exchange. It has become the pre-eminent office investor in the CEE real estate market through its market-leading positions both in Romania and in Poland. Globalworth invests, acquires, develops, and directly manages high-quality office real estate assets and industrial and logistics parks in prime locations, generating rental income from high quality tenants from around the globe. Managed by over 200 professionals across Cyprus, Guernsey, Romania and Poland, a combined value of its portfolio is €3.0 billion, as at 30 June 2020. Approximately 94.4% of the portfolio is in income-producing assets, predominately in the office sector, and leased to a diversified array of c.700 national and multinational corporates. In Romania, Globalworth is present in Bucharest, Timisoara, Constanta, and Pitesti, while in Poland its assets span Warsaw, Wroclaw, Lodz, Krakow, Gdansk and Katowice.