Globalworth announces that Dimitris Raptis is appointed sole CEO of the Group. Ioannis Papalekas is stepping down as CEO of the company effective 15th of December 2020.

Panattoni is demolishing the cement plant in Nowa Huta, where City Logistics Kraków I Is to be built with an area of 36,500 sqm. Additionally, a park is to be built in the centre of Konin on the site of a former grain elevator. Brownfield developments now comprise over 10% of all of Panattoni's projects and this proportion is very quickly rising.

The Ostrava City Council has approved the plan to build Panattoni Park Ostrava Airport near Leoš Janáček Ostrava Airport. The project aims to attract both leading domestic and global companies. It promises investments totalling around CZK 4 billion and up to 2,000 new jobs for the whole region. Panattoni, as the developer, will use the large existing industrial zone with high-quality transport infrastructure. The industrial premises with an area of 115,000 sqm will have minimal environmental impact. Construction should begin during 2022.    

Dutch-Czech real estate investment company Fidurock has obtained a zoning decision for the construction of a new retail park in Piešťany, Western Slovakia. The company acquired the land plot back in July 2018.

Israeli investment group AFI Properties has signed an agreement for the acquisition of the T-Mobile Office Park in the Warsaw district of Mokotów for about €100 million. The previous owner was Starwood Capital Group.

The first 3 quarters of 2020 across the CEE-6 have seen a 37.5% decrease (year-on-year) in overall office investment volumes. With positive news of vaccines due for deployment early in the new year, offices volumes are expected to rebound in 2021 according to a new report by Colliers International.

Local developer SDC Imobiliare, along with overseas investment funds, has launched what they claim to be the biggest real estate project in Romania. The Transilvania Smart City mixed-use, estimated to require an investment of €700 million, would see the construction of 10,000 apartments, a shopping centre, schools, supermarkets, a hotel and an aparthotel, office space, parks, and conference rooms in Cluj-Napoca. Work on the project is set to start in January 2021.

Building construction markets of the Balkan EECFA countries as a whole have shown resistance during the pandemic so far. Nonetheless, the region is foreseen to have yet another negative year in 2021, before expansion can return in 2022. The EECFA (Eastern European Construction Forecasting Association) has released its Construction Forecast Report for winter 2020.

City Park Hostivař in Prague 10 has been acquired by a Western European investment company, represented by BNP Paribas Real Estate. The name of the buyer and the purchase price has not been disclosed.

2020 has been dominated on the commercial real estate market in Poland by the pandemic, whose impact varied from sector to sector though. The pandemic has, however, given rise to or accelerated a number of developments, some of which are likely to stay with us for longer. Real estate advisory firm Savills explores future trends in its preliminary summary of 2020 and its outlook for the next 12 months.