Lviv IT-company SoftServe plans to invest over $100 million in the construction of a creative office campus on the site of Lviv penal colony No. 48 acquired for UAH 377.5 million at a privatization auction.
According to a SoftServe press release on the Business Wire portal, construction will begin in 2022 and it will take about five years. An international architectural bureau will be involved in the work on the project.
“The new campus will not only breathe new life into the whole district of Lviv, but will also continue the development of the city as a major educational and technological hub in Ukraine and in the world,” the co-founder and member of the Board of Directors of SoftServe, Oleh Denys, said.
According to the project, the campus will house SoftServe offices, as well as the company’s corporate university, conference rooms and exhibition grounds, a school and a kindergarten, and apartments.
As reported, SoftServe acquired Lviv penal colony No. 48 on a 10.7 hectare plot for UAH 377.5 million at a privatization auction held on June 3.
SoftServe specializes in software production, development services, quality control and support of information systems and business solutions. To date, about 10,000 employees of the company work in 38 offices. The main offices of the company are located in Lviv and Austin (Texas, the United States). The company’s development centers are located in Lviv, Kyiv, Dnipro, Kharkiv, Rivne, Ivano-Frankivsk, Chernyvtsi, Sofia (Bulgaria) and Wroclaw, Bialystok, Gliwice and Warsaw (Poland).
UDP of businessman Vasyl Khmelnytsky in partnership with KAN Development on Wednesday took part in the ribbon-cutting ceremony of the third campus – a new six-story B12 business center with a gross area of 16,900 square meters – in the UNIT.City innovation park (Kyiv). “We have already invested $50 million [in the construction of UNIT.City] and in the next year and a half we want to invest the same amount… It will be a mini-city: a school, a kindergarten, many offices and innovative companies, R & D centers, institutions, co-working space, laboratories,” Khmelnytsky, who is the founder of the UFuture investment group, said at a press briefing on Thursday.
According to UNIT.City Managing Partner Maxim Bakhmatov, thanks to the launch of the new campus, the total area of the business part of the park has doubled and now amounts to almost 30,000 square meters. In particular, the total area of the facility is 16,900 square meters, and the lettable area is 12,000 square meters. From the point of view of the residents of the new business center, the focus was made on large corporations – the lion’s share of the facility was leased to Metinvest Digital and the DTEK Academy. In general, about 1,000 people will work in the campus. The facility infrastructure also includes the UNIT.Verse conference space on the ground floor designed for 400 people for hosting big events.
According to the founder of KAN Development, Ihor Nikonov, the campus was built in accordance with the U.S. LEED green building rating system. The completion of the certification procedure is expected to be in 2019. In general, it is planned that 300,000 square meters of commercial space will be built in the innovation park, which will be two thirds of the total area of UNIT.City. According to him, in a month KAN Development will start building a residential part of UNIT.City.
“In 2019, we will build two more new campuses – a seven-story building and a six-story building. Thus, we will do this year 9% of what we plan as a whole,” CEO and Managing Partner of UNIT.City Max Yakover said.
In addition, according to him, in the summer it is planned to open the central square of the city – Event Plaza, which will become the geographical and event center of the innovation park.
“This will be the central square of the park – an ancient Greek forum with an area of 5,000 square meters. It will allow us to accept urban formats. These could be exhibitions, fairs, concerts,” Yakover added.
UDP and KAN Development are co-investors and co-developers of the new campus of UNIT.City.
UNIT.City Innovation Park officially opened in April 2017 on the territory of the former Kyiv Motorcycle Plant. On its territory there are co-working space Chasopys-UNIT, the IT-school UNIT Factory, three laboratories, a business campus, a foundation and five accelerators.
