Three formerly huge pits right on Vienna's main train station office towers now stand at just 40 to 90 meters in height, "The Icon Vienna". There is sufficient demand for these spaces, a total of 79,000 square meters for offices and 5,000 square meters for shops. "More than 70 percent are let by the end of the year," said Signa Managing Director Christoph Stadlhuber to journalists.
The largest tenant is the Bawag, which moved there before the turn of the year with more than 1400 employees. Her office there are (among others) the tax office TPA, Nestle and Procter & Gamble. As a grocer, a Mercury market is on site, as "Gym" soon the fitness club "John Harris".
As a major landlord of this building built in modern cool architecture Signa wants to make the effort to sell "emotion". Because the companies that rent in there, in addition to good traffic and flexible floor plans, increasingly focus on employee retention - the up to 5,000 employees who find a place in the three office towers, should feel comfortable there.
"The requirement goes beyond the square meter rental," said the Signa boss. "This is the crucial factor in office letting in the future as well - how do I bring the emotion with me?" With - depending on the floor - 16 to 20 euros per square meter prices in the "Icon" BE REDUCED already "well below the office rents in the 1st district," which is considered as quite attractive.
In the "race for talented employees", employer attractiveness is certainly a key issue, emphasized Franz Kühmayer of the Zukunftsinstitut at the presentation of the Trend Guide "From Implicit to Implementation: Rethinking the Spaces of Work".
According to Stadlhuber, modern working environments should promote creativity, exchange and lifelong learning. The office of the future must invite mixed-use spaces for learning, relaxation, concentration, brainstorming and communicating. Also important is a good location and an attractive environment with restaurants, sports facilities and services. In the offices are also increasingly furniture or other furnishings, which were previously rather in a living room. "From the fixed workplace, you do not get away emotionally so quickly," said the Signa boss.
Co-working in the coming
But also "co-working spaces", ie short-term rentable office space, are increasingly an issue: "The tenants are still renting in a classic way," Stadlhuber conceded, "but they want to know who offers co-working spaces." In the "Icon" just under 10 percent of the office space is let to the two co-working space providers Regus and Spaces. In London, the largest office leasing company offers 30 percent of its space with this concept. "This is not a start-up topic, the strongest users are companies in the order of plus / minus 1,000 employees," said the Signa boss. In Berlin Signa leases in this area, for example, the US Internet giant Amazon, which wants to create space for creative people.
The Signa Group, founded by the Tyrolean entrepreneur Rene Benko in 1999, is one of the largest real estate investors in Europe, with real estate assets of over € 14 billion and an additional development volume of around € 8 billion.
(Source: Die Presse)
