The key catalyst behind the further growth of Poland’s regional office markets is the BSS sector, which is increasingly expanding into smaller cities as tenants continue looking for attractive alternatives outside Warsaw. This is benefiting such locations as Krakow, Wrocław and Tricity and all the regional markets are seeing multiple modern office projects underway in response to the growing occupier demand.

Forum Gdańsk opened its doors officially to the public. This modern urban shopping destination is situated in the inner city of Gdańsk and offers 62,000 sqm GLA of retail, a multi-screen cinema, leisure facilities, restaurants and 1,100 parking spaces. Forum Gdańsk also includes a boutique hotel and the multi-functional Gdańsk Heritage Centre. The centre boasts a new public transport hub and is adjacent to the main railway station, the Old Town and key municipal buildings. Multi Poland, part of Multi Corporation, the Gdańsk municipal authorities and PKP Polish Railways cooperated on this major project. Multi developed the project and is responsible for the management of Forum Gdańsk. The total investment, including road infrastructure development, was approximately €194 million.

Globalworth announced the acquisition of West Link, a recently completed office property in Wroclaw, by Globalworth Poland. West Link is located to the west of the city centre and is well situated on Wroclaw's key communication arteries. It offers 14,400 sqm gross leasable area and occupancy of 100%, with an annual contracted rental income of €2.5 million and a weighted average lease length in excess of 6 years. The main tenant is Nokia Solutions & Network, which is also the main tenant at GPRE's West Gate, an adjacent high-quality office property which comprises a further 16,600 sqm.

Preliminary data has revealed an increase in shopping centre footfall on Thursdays, Fridays and Mondays, and a decrease on Saturdays. Cushman & Wakefield presented a summary of the first quarter of 2018 on the Polish retail market in its latest report.

The Polish industrial market just closed its best start to the year to date with demand hitting around 1.1 million sqm. Furthermore, 1.8 million sqm of warehouse space is currently under construction. JLL summarised the condition of the industrial and warehouse market in Poland at the end of Q1 2018.

The rapid growth of e-commerce is changing the way warehouses are being built. In many BTS buildings, automated or semi-automated racking systems and robots are deployed for product storage and picking, says Krzysztof Czekalski, Technical Director in the Industrial & Warehouse Department at Cresa.

Echo Investment is launching a joint venture with a company controlled by an unnamed investor. Resi4Rent is the first fully integrated investor, operator and asset manager for purpose-built residential communities in Poland. With more than 1,200 apartments under construction and another 1,700 apartments ready for construction in the next 12 months, Resi4Rent will be the largest residential for rent platform in Poland. The first tenants will be able to move in during the fourth quarter of 2019.

Hansainvest Real Assets GmbH intends to significantly expand its logistics property portfolio. Logistics assets with a volume of €200-300 million will be acquired by the end of 2019. The acquisitions will be concentrated on the core markets of Germany, Benelux and the United Kingdom. Selected properties may also be acquired in France, the Nordics, Spain and Poland. A total of between six and eight properties will be acquired.

JLL and the city of Warsaw will begin a cooperation to establish a development strategy for downtown trade, highlighting places with the greatest potential for creating new shopping locations as well as increasing the attractiveness of high streets for both potential tenants and customers. JLL already has a similar experience in this field - experts from the company are responsible for management of the Regent Street in London.

In terms of size, Łódź is currently the sixth largest regional office market in Poland. Investors are attracted by the city's extensive pool of specialists and an increasingly strong business brand. Experts from JLL indicate that the increasing maturity of the Łódź office market is contributing to the development of state-of-the-art office clusters in the city.