Pulkovo allows landing.
The business zone around Pulkovo Airport began to take shape before the real prerequisites for this appeared.
The construction of a new international air hub will undoubtedly affect the emerging business here.
The question is — how?
BN.ru asked experts to find out how the oversaturation of the commercial space market has already affected the operation of existing facilities and how the further development of business zones in Pulkovo should proceed.
All land in the area near the terminals of the St. Petersburg airport has long been sold out. First, hypermarkets appeared on Pulkovskoe Highway — “Lenta”, “Metro”, “O’Key”, “Karusel”, etc. Then shopping centers — “MasShtab”, “Pulkovo-III”, the hundred thousandth building “Leto” was being completed.
Later, the office function was added to the trading function. All built and designed business centers, in addition to being positioned in class A and B+, have impressive areas — from 30 to 80 thousand square meters. m. The Aeroplaza business center is already operating near the international terminal, and office buildings for the Airport City and Pulkovo Sky complexes are being built.
Today, due to the lack of demand, owners and managers of shopping centers in the Pulkovo area have to accept discounts, which, according to one of the market participants, “it is not customary to talk about out loud.” In the eight-story Aeroplaza business center, another expert states, no more than three floors are occupied by tenants.
The Finnish EKE Group decided to introduce the Pulkovo Sky complex with a total area of 76 thousand square meters. m in queues, although the construction of all three of its buildings is almost complete.
“There is currently no economic feasibility in creating business centers of the highest category. But the crisis caught us at a time when 85% of all construction work had been completed. We simply had no way back,” says EKE Group Tenant Relations Coordinator Liliya Eremenko.
As part of the Airport City complex, only a hotel is currently being built; the construction of office buildings is currently suspended.
According to experts, the experience of these projects shows that many developers and land owners built their facilities in the business areas of Pulkovo Airport based on dry economic indicators, and not on what would be in demand by end consumers.
It becomes obvious that for the further development of this territory a unified concept is needed, including new circumstances — the international air hub project. And without the city’s participation in the development of the infrastructure of business zones in the Pulkovo area, developers will not survive.
Nikolay Kazansky, commercial director of Colliers International SPb:
One of the problems in the development of the Pulkovo-III business zone is that in the short term, about 150 thousand square meters were announced for commissioning here at once. m of high-class office space.
Considering that the entire volume of the St. Petersburg office market currently amounts to about 800 thousand sq. m. m, the area planned for commissioning here is objectively excessive, even in the absence of a crisis in the market. In addition, the rental rates for the properties being commissioned in Pulkovo were initially stated to be too high.
In business centers on the periphery they should be significantly lower — by 40-50% than in the central areas of the city. This is in line with global practice.
In my opinion, the start of decentralization of the office market in St. Petersburg came at a bad time. This idea could have been successful if the market was booming. The new territories were supposed to be turned into developed business zones with good transport accessibility.
Existing projects turned out to be the flagships of this movement and, unfortunately, bore the brunt of the crisis, feeling the crisis especially acutely. Indicators of underutilization of office space in areas remote from the center are currently the highest and can reach up to 80%.
In different cities of the world, office centers, hotels, shopping and recreational facilities are natural satellites of airports. However, it must be taken into account that part of the commercial space will be planned as part of the new international air hub. In addition, the developers planned to introduce several tens of thousands of office space on the territory of the Pulkovo-I business zone.
Given the oversaturation of the commercial real estate market, a deep analysis of demand is necessary, including when planning new construction on the territory of Pulkovo-III. A reasonable area of the facility for one-time input, in my opinion, can be in the range of 20-30 thousand square meters. m, larger ones need to be divided into queues.
Ekaterina Markovets, director of the consulting and assessment department at ARIN:
The absence of a unified concept for the development of the airport zone will entail uneven development of transport and engineering infrastructure facilities.
Considering that all lands in the Pulkovo zone are privately owned, it is currently very difficult to reconcile all these multiple interests into a single development concept. Exactly the same problem exists with the functional zoning of a territory.
Over time, of course, the airport area will turn into a developed and interesting public and business zone for developers and end users, as has happened in all major airports in the world. But how long this development path will take depends to the maximum extent on the general economic situation in the country and on the commitment of city authorities to the practice of strict urban planning.
Currently, construction is carried out on the principle of “who goes first”. This is not entirely effective, since the “pioneers” of the development of the territory will take upon themselves all the difficulties and risks associated with the development process.
First of all, we are talking about creating demand for objects in the Pulkovo zone, which, in fact, does not exist. The most successful projects will be those that start in parallel with the comprehensive reconstruction of the airport — in 2012-2020.
Now the number of “paper” projects proposed for implementation on the territory of the business zone in Pulkovo seriously exceeds the capacity of the future market, even if the city government’s plans to transform the airport into an international hub with a capacity of 30-40 million passengers per year are being implemented. This primarily applies to office space. All “extra” projects will either have to be repurposed or die.
Currently, the occupancy rate of business centers in the area close to the airport is about 30%.
Trade is also practically unclaimed, since there is no demand. It can only be formed by such processes as the development of the airport itself and transport infrastructure, the development of housing development in the parts of the Pushkinsky district of St. Petersburg closest to the zone of influence of the airport — “Slavyanka”, “Novaya Izhora”, “On the Tsarskoye Selo Hills”. Thus, we estimate the prospects for the emergence of demand for shopping complexes at 7-15 years.
Alexander Grishin, General Director of VMB-Trust:
The implementation of most of the projects included in the Pulkovo-III business zone is currently frozen. Only facilities that had reached a high degree of readiness by the beginning of the crisis are put into operation. But before 2011, it was planned to build more than 800 thousand square meters here. m of commercial space for various purposes. However, a number of unresolved problems, such as transport accessibility, seriously slow down the development of territories and the filling of already constructed office buildings.
In the long term, this place is undoubtedly convenient and promising. However, today it is already obvious that it is necessary to come up with non-trivial ways to fill the office space available in the Pulkovo-III zone. Today it is especially important to correctly assess the negativity and existing problems in order to successfully neutralize them. It became obvious that it was necessary to develop the entire zone comprehensively, including the airport. And without the city’s participation in infrastructure development, developers cannot survive.
The solution to the problem of transport accessibility, in particular, is viewed differently by market participants. Some experts are in favor of a ground express, following the example of the one running in Moscow, while others consider it more rational to extend the metro line. But this is only one of a number of problems, for the solution of which it is important not only the support of the city authorities, but also the consolidation of the forces of all companies operating in the Pulkovo-III zone.
Kirill Akinshin, director of the consulting and valuation department of Maris Properties in association with CB Richard Ellis:
The business area around Pulkovo Airport really began to develop before all the necessary prerequisites appeared. And it has always been ahead of the demand that residents and guests of the city had for this zone. At the beginning, there were not enough buyers for hypermarkets, then they finally appeared, but interest in shopping centers such as “Scale” or “Pulkovo-3” (they stand half empty) never arose. Therefore, there are difficulties in filling properties with tenants: existing shopping centers are half full, office centers — even less. In my opinion, the shopping centers located here lack scale. In this sense, the Leto shopping and entertainment complex under construction, whose area will be more than one hundred thousand square meters, will be more successful.
Perhaps the emergence of an international air hub will improve the situation, but it would be foolish to count on this alone. The increased number of transit passengers will not allow us to sell more. In addition, the hub concept will most likely include the creation of new shopping and office centers and hotels. Which over time may further worsen the situation in existing facilities.
Oleg Gromkov, head of the market research group at Knight Frank SPb:
The catalyst for the early formation of a business zone in Pulkovo was the fact that the city began selling prepared plots near the airport back in 2001. The proximity to St. Petersburg, the future Ring Road, as well as global experience in developing areas near airports, attracted investors here. First, hypermarkets and shopping centers appeared, later — business centers (including on plots that had already been resold at a higher price). At the same time, the scale of projects exceeded local demand.
To ensure successful occupancy of properties, the requested rental rates had to be reduced even at the construction stage, but the general growth of the market gave developers hope for improving the economics of projects. As a result, today completed facilities are only 15-50% occupied. And the main tool for increasing occupancy is again reducing rental rates, which is what has been happening in the last six months.
Alexey Chizhov, consulting director of Praktis CB:
Even before the onset of an unstable economic situation in our country, the timing of filling one of the business centers, which was among the “pioneers” in the new business zone “Pulkovo-III,” did not meet the price expectations of the owner. The only thing that can help such projects is lowering these expectations and reducing the rental rate. Unlike, for example, Moscow, in St. Petersburg, class A business centers with high rates cannot be located in such zones, especially today, when tenants have become more economical. In my opinion, it is advisable to build technology and business parks with low rental rates in Pulkovo-III.
Natalia Chereyskaya, Marketing Director of Becar Realty Group:
The business zone in the Pulkovo area began to take shape as soon as the airport was built: customs terminals, warehouses, and housing appeared. At the beginning of perestroika, a business center with a conference room was opened in Aviagorodok, which was rented by carriers, declarants and other companies associated with customs. It is logical that the urgent reconstruction of the airport also required the development of the business zone.
Meanwhile, the Pulkovo-III zone is known as the “cemetery of hypermarkets.” When the Lenta hypermarket opened here in November 2002 (total area — 14 thousand, usable area — 7.8 thousand sq. m) — it was still a relatively new format. There was good access to the shopping center and parking was organized. The buyers were comfortable, they did not pay attention to the little things: there are few toilets in the hypermarket, there are queues at the cash registers… There were no other options.
In December 2005, the MasShtab shopping complex with an area of 20 thousand square meters appeared here. m, and one of its anchor tenants was the Paterson supermarket, which was more expensive and smaller in area than the Lenta retail space. Naturally, it was visited mainly by those who were too lazy to stand in line and who were interested in a slightly different range of goods. A successful acquisition for MasShtab was the Santa House hypermarket for household goods, which attracted a sufficient flow of visitors thanks to its assortment. At that time, there was also a food court and Plato on the second floor, but in general the second floor with 3-4 tenants could attract few people. After the closure of Paterson, the area was empty for a long time, and eventually the Fitness House fitness club with four swimming pools was opened.
In March 2007, the Pulkovo-3 center (48 thousand sq. m) opened in the zone under consideration, positioning itself as a multifunctional entertainment and shopping complex. It houses a cinema, a bowling alley, and a billiards room, but the first floor of the facility is now practically unoccupied by tenants, only Arena, Trial Sports, and jewelry are represented. The parking lot has been partially converted for karting. Unfortunately, now neither the travelators, nor the elevators, nor the escalators in the complex most often function, not to mention the lighting inside and outside. It is difficult to say whether there is a nightclub and restaurant there. There is practically no parking in front of the complex; it was not equipped either before the opening or later.
Simple logic dictates that the owners of all complexes could come to an agreement and try to unite these objects with a common gallery or parking lot, and think through other options in order to create a retail park, but, alas…
Now, in the wake of the crisis, it is fashionable to say that we have a consumer market. But no one still thinks about what this consumer is missing? How to attract him to your shopping centers and even if this consumer, through potholes and bumps, despite the exit from the Ring Road, still strives to his favorite “Lenta” or fitness club, then how can he park there normally and for free? How to get from a stop three hundred meters from these objects? How to get through where there is practically no pedestrian passage and travel is difficult? All these issues must be resolved by the owners and managers of the complexes.
Dmitry Kirman Big real estate portal