Where the Street Has No Name

Turning Competitors into Partners Far From Home

The Assignment

Acquire a property in Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski (pronounced “Ah-stro-vee-yetz Shvee-ent–oh–kresky”), a city 90 miles south of Warsaw, to develop a regional shopping center. The site was tangled with infrastructure challenges, zoning complications, and was owned by the city.

The Strategy

As Executive Vice President and partner at Polimeni International, I led our development program across Poland. In Ostrowiec we found opportunity — but also a checklist of complications:

• The city owned the land, and could only sell it at public tender. Tesco, one of the world’s largest supermarket chains, also wanted the site
• A creek bisected the property
• A raised levee loomed behind it
• A new connector road would need to be engineered and built
• The public pool next door wanted part of the land for their parking

Meanwhile, we were pre-leasing the yet-to-be-acquired project with contracts drafted in two languages, structured around three currencies and three separate legal regimes. In other words, just another day in Poland!

Turning a competitor into a partner, we arranged a lease with Tesco as our anchor tenant, which satisfied everyone's goals. Our legal team crafted a “double lease” structure that enabled a long-term tenancy, which we needed for our permanent financing — previously a legal impossibility under the Polish civil code.

Meanwhile, our engineers designed multiple solutions for our site issues:

• A system of permeable pavers to manage any runoff from the levee
• A humongous 10’ diameter culvert system to channel the creek, over which we laid the parking lot—and expanded to service the public pool. (BTW: In Poland you rarely “pour” a parking lot; you “lay” one, brick-by-brick!)
• We built the new connector road, which dramatically improved access to the center; it also happened to enable us to subdivide the property and create more upside

The Outcome

We broke ground on April 1st and opened on Thanksgiving day — a blazingly fast 8 months for building a 220,000sf covered shopping center — culverts, roads & all. We had previously signed a “forward purchase contract” with First Property Group of London with whom we closed shortly thereafter. And as a bonus: Pawel, head of our Warsaw office and still dear friend to this day, shrewdly negotiated a sale of the subdivided parcel to French DIY retailer Castorama for about what we paid for the entire site at auction a year earlier.

And, while you can find Mill Creek, the Stone Canal on a map, and you can turn your car from Adam Mickiewicz Street onto “Polimeni Street” (as the locals called it); I don’t believe our ¼ mile long road ever got a street sign or an official name!

Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch...

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