The press about Race: IT companies have reached out for evictions.
Yesterday, Race Communications announced the completion of the construction of the Country Park business center in Khimki near Moscow. This project has two interesting features. Firstly, there is still no Russian The IT company did not try to work independently in the real estate market. Secondly, real estate experts believe that no one except IT companies will be interested in offices in Country Park.
Race Communications was established in 1997. Its main business is the design and construction of corporate communication networks. The subsidiary structure of the system integrator is the operator Race Telecom - serves about 5 thousand subscribers. Among its corporate clients is Sberbank Russia and RAO Gazprom. The turnover of Race Communications is about $30 million per year.
Country Park is a Class A business center (this category assumes high-quality finishing of the building, developed information infrastructure, underground parking), it cost Race Communications $12 million. For this money, the company built an 18-storey office building with an area of 18 thousand square meters on the shore of Butakovsky Bay. It is assumed that a square meter of the Country Park will cost tenants $ 300 per year. According to Race Communications CEO Leonid Lopatin, the project should pay off within five years. "We are the first IT company in Russia to act as a developer," says the head of Race. - None of the system integrators or telecom operators have ever been engaged in the construction of such structures."
Race Communications believes that the migration of offices of small and medium-sized companies outside the Moscow Ring Road will now begin. Race representatives cite low rents, developed telecommunications infrastructure, proximity to large shopping and entertainment centers (in particular, the Ramstore-City complex on Leningradskoye Highway) and location in an ecologically clean area as advantages of the Moscow business center. Real estate experts are not sure that business centers on the outskirts will gain popularity in the near future. So, according to Sergey Eliseev, Marketing Director of Incom-Real Estate Corporation, the process of moving offices outside Moscow will not be massive. Most likely, he says, the Country Park will become an attractive place for IT companies: "This is a normal way out. They don't care where they are. But for companies involved in servicing the flow of customers and counterparties, such an arrangement is unrealistic: look at the traffic jams on the Leningrad highway." "For other (not P. - Kommersant) companies, the main disadvantage here will be the personnel issue," the development director believes Swiss Realty Group Igor Sherstnev. - Employees will have to get to work much longer than to the center, and not everyone will agree to this... Although the cost of renting a square meter of $ 300 is tempting."
Race's competitors are skeptical about the prospects of a new business center, but at the same time consider such a diversification of the business of the GG company logical. System integrators and telecom operators almost always have licenses for construction activities. And it is irrational to use them only for the construction of communication facilities (telephone exchanges, data centers, etc.) with the current construction boom. "Now in Moscow," market participants say, "it is much more profitable to engage in construction than to create corporate networks. The construction market is extremely heated, and in the market of system integration, supply, on the contrary, exceeds demand." However, not all system integrators intend to follow the example of Race. "This is not the first IT company I know that diversifies its business in this way," says the CEO of KROC Boris Bobrovnikov. "But going into another field of activity cannot but blur the image of the company in the IT market."
