Belgrade still needs more office space – Shopping centers demand innovations, Borca becoming attractive for residence?

The round table, organized by the Real Estate magazine and recently held at Hotel Saint Ten, placed focus on the new investment cycle that is apparent in Serbia, especially in Belgrade, but also in the region. Still, as one of the speakers, Zorana Zdrale Burlic, CEO of Delta Real Estate, pointed out, the market of Belgrade, even with the new projects, is still below the regional level.

– Belgrade has 380 m2 of office space to each 1,000 residents, whereas the regional average is 500 m2 – she pointed out.

She especially highlighted shopping centers, saying that they were getting increasingly important for renters, who dictate the way they are designed more and more. Also, as she said, these are no longer merely places to shop, but also a place to spend time at.

– We need to be innovative and digital and offer more features for the whole family. The priority is to adapt to each market and the mentality of the local populace, as well as local standards – Zdrale Burlic said and cited the examples of Banjaluka and Varna.

– We brought over 40 brands to Republika Srpska, opened a cinema and a restaurant, whereas, in Bulgaria, we had to take the competition into account, to experiment with the features and to place focus on innovative features.

Dijana Ivanova, the director of Kopernikus Gradnja, talked about office and residential properties. She mentioned two large project carried out by the company at the moment.

– There's the business center in Block 43, which will be adapted to the bus station and feature a futuristic look. We're talking 100,000 m2 of space. There's also the Kopernikus Tower, a residential facility we believe will change the look of this New Belgrade block. The plan is for the construction to start in two years – she said.

The second project is planned in Borca, on 90,000 m2. When asked about the choice of location, she said that it was the direction in which Belgrade was expanding and added that investments in infrastructure were planned as well.

– We expect to raise the standard of this part of the city and to provide young couples with living conditions the kind of which can be found in New Belgrade blocks, but at more affordable prices. That is certainly a great challenge for us – Ivanova said.

Vladimir Djoric, a partner at Zabriskie Studio, says that the old part of Belgrade has fewer free locations for building and that there's too much construction there anyway, which is not the case with New Belgrade.

– The new thing are closed residential-office complexes, condominiums, where the most frequent problem is sound insulation, as is the case with all new buildings, but the construction industry has provided products addressing this problem, so those parameters have been improved as well – Djoric says.

Zorana Zdrale Burlic also mentioned hotel management and said that top quality service was the priority and that the current trend was for guests to be made to feel like home. She also noted that Hotel Indigo would open soon and that it would have local characteristics.

Aleksandra Kekic