For the “hundredth” time – Business – Kommersant

Higher rates and demand are pushing St. Petersburg flexible office operators to enter the Moscow market. The Praktik chain will convert part of the Sotyi shopping and office center near the Proletarskaya metro station into a coworking space. It may not be possible to fill it quickly due to high competition for tenants, experts warn.

The Praktik chain rented four floors for co-working in the building of the Sotyi office and shopping center on Vorontsovskaya Street in Moscow. This was told to Kommersant by its CEO Vladimir Dorofeev. Flexible office for 2.8 thousand sq. m will be designed for 578 jobs and will open next year. Investments in the project, together with a partner who is not disclosed, will amount to 256 million rubles. In the future, the flexible office area is planned to be increased to 3.5 thousand square meters. m, says Mr. Dorofeev. Next year, the network will launch two more co-working spaces in Moscow, he specified.

Hundreds did not provide comments. According to SPARK-Interfax, the office and retail complex is owned by Instroy Group LLC. The owner has long wanted to convert part of the space for co-working, but for a long time the operators did not dare to rent them, recalls Olesya Malakhova, deputy director of the office real estate department at Nikoliers.

This is the second attempt by the chain to scale up its business in the Moscow market. Previously, Praktik managed sites in the Basmanny Dvor public space and on Volgogradsky Prospekt, but then withdrew from these projects by selling a share to partners. In Moscow, flexible offices with a reasonable price in a good location are in demand, therefore, with the right positioning, the object will be in demand, believes Ekaterina Belova, head of the office space department at IBC Real Estate.

But since there is no high business activity in this area, Praktik will have to compete with sites in the center that are more popular with tenants, Malakhova warns.

St. Petersburg operator of flexible offices Page is also interested in development in Moscow. Negotiations are now underway with the owners of the facilities to launch sites on a franchise model, says Maria Sumarokova, Director General of the management company Page. Projects with mini-offices for project teams and small companies have investment potential, while there are enough co-working spaces with a layout for large businesses in the city, she emphasizes.

Moscow is distinguished by a higher level of rates and demand for flexible offices, Ms. Belova states. In addition, the capacity of this market is more than 380 thousand square meters. m, which is significantly higher than in St. Petersburg, the expert adds. However, at the same time, a higher level of vacancy is observed in the capital market: at the end of October this figure reached 37%, while in St. Petersburg at the end of this year it is at the level of 20%, calculated in NF Group. After the pandemic, the demand for co-working spaces in Moscow grew, which stimulated the opening of a large number of sites that have not yet had time to fill up.

Konstantin Kurkin, St. Petersburg