Nordicum - Real Estate Annual Finland 2010 | Page 45

The third stage of
Plaza Business Park
in Vantaa will be the
first commercial site in
Finland complying with
the requirements of
Energy Class A.

Jorma Ahokas, Managing Director of NCC Property Development.
At present, NCC has realised 11 Business Parks which
encompasses 36 buildings. All
and all, this means working
places for 15,000 people.
Ahokas notes that as the
Finns have been working hard
on the concept, slowly but surely the rest of the world has been
starting to pay attention. Now
there are even export prospects
for the concept.
“The first Business Park
under our concept abroad is being built in Stavanger, Norway.”

Paradigms
Shifting

ed in interdisciplinary research
that put the person in the limelight. NCC set out to build offices where people would thrive,
thus boosting productivity onto
unprecedented levels.
“Many elements came together here, from technology
and environmental concerns to
the comfort of the workplace,”
Päärni says.
“The main thing moving
from the second generation to
third was emphasis on stressfree working environment and
workplace management,” adds

The 4G office buildings of the
Plaza 3 will honour the original
NCC Business Parks concept
which offers companies of various sizes the best possible facilities. In the Plaza 3, special attention has been paid to the future challenges of work: rapidly
developing technology, globalisation and well-being at work.
“Globalisation in this context means that we have witnessed a shift in the nature of
work itself: now it mainly the
‘hard drive’ of the personnel that
is being put to the test,” Päärni
explains.
Therefore, the updated
concept provides the workers
with more inspiration, meeting
places, ecology and modern virtual solutions.
While the focus is still
very much on the people, 4G
has also another definite target:
the environment. NCC Property Development was the first
company in Finland to receive
the status of EU’s Green Building Partner and in its activities
it complies with the international BREEAM environmental assessment method. Environmental development work will
be continued during the NCC
Green Working project.

Green to the Core
Jorma Ahokas notes that the big
transformation between 3G and
4G is the added emphasis on energy-efficiency: green is very
much the colour of the day, and
NCC wants to make sure that
it runs all the way to the core.

Spektri Business Park in Espoo city is the grand old lady of
Business Parks in Finland.

The company is ready to walk
the talk: while the EU system requires that the energy consumption of a Green Building project
must be at least 25 percent less
than previously, NCC is cutting
consumption by half.
“Energy Class A mandates
that energy consumption is reduced by 50% from the existing norms – and this is precisely what we are doing now and in
the future,” Ahokas says. In fact,
the third stage of Plaza will be
the first commercial site complying with the requirements of
Energy Class A.
Ahokas believes that especially investors are paying a
close eye to the project:
“In addition to location,
the attention turns more and
more towards energy efficiency now,” he says.
The excavation work at
the site will kick off in January
2010 and after one year of labour, the first office building of
the third stage of Plaza will be
completed by February 2011.
The project is looking forward,
onto the next decade and better days: even the names of the
buildings – Pilke (glimmer), Hehku (glow), Loiste (lustre), Tuike (twinkle) and Halo – signal
the arrival of a new, brighter era.
“We will most likely put
up one building per year,” Päär-

ni says, adding that the airport
Ring Rail (scheduled for 2014)
is boosting the appeal of the area. The distance to the station
will be only 400 metres from the
nearest building.

Next Wave of
Shopping Centres
In addition to Business Parks,
NCC has strong experience in
developing shopping centres.
At the end of August, it was announced that the City of Espoo
has given NCC Property Development and Citycon the planning reservation for the Matinkylä metro station (see related story on p. xx), the biggest station of the ne ܁ݕ