Canada’s Brookfield & Partners has headed a consortium of investors who joined a project to build a first stage of Innovation District IT Park in Lviv with gross area of 10 ha. The cost of the project is $160 million. An Interfax-Ukraine correspondent has reported that investors jointly with Canadian ambassador to Ukraine Roman Waschuk, Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovy and Lviv IT Cluster representatives, who would be the future tenants of the park, took part in the groundbreaking ceremony.
Founding Partner & CEO of Horizon Capital Lenna Koszarny told Interfax-Ukraine that the funds managed by Horizon Capital are among consortium investors.
She said that a design company has been created. It owns a part of the land parcel where the project will be implemented.
Developer and investor of Innovation District IT Park, owner of Galereja Centre Volodymyr Zhenchak said that in coming months the design company plans to buy the rest of land parcels for the project. Today these parcels are leased. He also said that leasing arrangements for over a half of the area of the IT park have been made with the future tenants of the park.
He said that it would take two and a half years to build the first stage of the park.
Zhenchak also said that negotiations on lending by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) are underway. Representatives of the two international institutions were present at the groundbreaking ceremony.
He said that the first stage would be over 160,000 square meters, although it is incorrect to assess the project only in terms of square meters.
“How could 3 ha of green areas be assessed? The main thing is that the project would give 14,000 jobs,” he said. The shares of the current participants of the project are not disclosed.
As reported, the IT Park will occupy 10 hectares between Stryiska, Chmoly, Luhanska and Kozelnytska Streets in Lviv. The construction of the first stage of the IT Park will last about 2.5 years, which will cover about 90% of the entire project, and the first round of investment will reach $95 million. The second stage of the IT Park provides for the construction of business centers and will last about five or six years. Six eight-storey Class A office buildings, three business centers, a hotel (5,700 square meters, 150-200 rooms), a kindergarten (2,000 square meters), a university (6,000 square meters), a health club, and a parking lot for 3,167 cars are to be built under the project.
SoftServe, N-iX, GlobalLogic, Intellias and Perfectial will be first residents of the Innovation District IT Park. They will occupy about 50,000 square meters of office space. The university block will house a department of Lviv’s Ukrainian Catholic University.
In addition, Lviv IT Cluster plans to open modern IT labs there that will be available to IT students of all Lviv-based universities.
Brookfield Asset Management is the largest Canadian investment company with widely diverse asset portfolio and a 115 year-long history. The company specializes in infrastructure and real estate operations, renewable energy, and direct investments.
Lviv IT Cluster is a community of IT companies in Lviv.
Galereja Centrе, created in 2001, is a private investment and development company that implements commercial real estate projects in Lviv and the Western region.
