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.
Demolition that has already been begun on the concrete production plant in Kraków's Nowa Huta district on ul. Cementowa. Before work was begun the historic industrial usage of the entire site was researched and water and soil samples were taken to determine the extent of the pollution. The entire reinforced concrete from the dismantled cement plant is to be recycled – the steel is to be salvaged and sent to the foundry as scrap metal, while the concrete is to be crushed again and used as aggregate for the building materials used to construct the new park — City Logistics Kraków I with a combined area of 36,500 sqm. The first building is to be ready in September and already has its first tenant. Logistics operator InPost is to occupy 9,000 sqm. The next building of 22,000 sqm is to be completed a little later.
Work has also begun on the construction of a park on the site of a former grain elevator in the centre of Konin. The tall abandoned building, which had eleven floors, with masts for telephone base stations on the roof, could be seen from almost everywhere in the town and was a blot on the landscape. As part of the renewal of this area, the old building has been dismantled (the tower was brought down with explosives) and the materials were recycled. The soil was remediated because the site was also once used as a petrol station. The first new building of 6,500 sqm has been constructed on the decontaminated land and more are planned. Both projects are to be certified under BREEAM for a minimum rating of 'Very Good'.
Developments on former industrial land now make up just over 10% of all of Panattoni's projects and this proportion is rapidly rising. Just in the first three quarters of 2020, brownfield developments accounted for 35% of the space that was handed over. Another example of such a development is the Szczecin Załom park, built on the site of a former factory producing aircraft engines for German Junkers, which then became a cable production plant. The developer had to deal with deep and very extensive land contamination. The remediation, the effectiveness of which was confirmed by the Regional Directorate of Environmental [RDOŚ], was largely dependent on biological mechanisms used on site as well as filling in the excavations with decontaminated soil. Many similar sites can be found across Silesia such as the redevelopment of a housing factory in Zabrze as well as a slag heap left over from the mining industry in Ruda Śląska.
