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Kapitel completes 60-million-euro office development in Riga

Elemental Skanste project received a construction permit and the highest BREEAM ranking in the Baltics

Riga City Construction Board has given final approval to the project design and construction permit for the two Elemental Skanste office buildings developed by Kapitel. The company is finalising the construction tender and the construction of the two 10-storey buildings is planned to begin this summer. The project has also been awarded a BREEAM sustainability certificate at the level of Excellent for the design process.

 “Elemental Skanste is a huge, demanding project, and we have set very high quality standards for ourselves as developers. We are happy to report important milestones in the development process, related to both international sustainability certification and moving closer to starting with the construction,” said Andris Stankevičs, CEO of SIA Kapitel.

Riga City Construction Board has issued final approval for the project design for the construction permit. SIA Kapitel is finalising the tender process for the general contractor of the construction works. “As soon as we have completed the negotiations and signed the agreement with the general contractor we will start the construction. The construction period is planned to be around 20 months, which allows us to look forward to the completion of the two-tower building in 2021,” Andris Stankevičs added.

The energy-efficient and sustainable Latvian Class A++ office buildings are designed based on the Building Information Modelling (BIM) principles and in line with the international BREEAM standard. Elemental Skanste is the first in Latvia to have a positive Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report from Environmental State Bureau. The design of the buildings was developed by the Estonian architecture company Arhitektuuribüroo PLUSS in cooperation with its Latvian partner SIA Birojs T22.

“One of our key values is sustainability and we are happy that Elemental Skanste is one of the first office buildings in Riga to be awarded a BREEAM sustainability certificate for the design process at the level of Excellent. According to the official website of BREEAM, the score of 80.1% is the highest ever awarded in the Baltics for any project. We are the first developers in Latvia for whom the BREEAM rating score is close to outstanding,” said Ilze Reira, Sales and Customer Relations Manager.

“We see that companies become more educated and, instead of lowest costs and a short-term view, they focus more on long-term efficiency and people as their main resource. In Elemental Skanste, we create a human-friendly, healthy and contemporary working environment with flexible office space and supporting services like work café, sports club and shared meeting rooms,” Ilze Reira added. “In addition, we offer professional assistance in office planning, helping companies to develop the office layout based exactly on their needs. In this process, we use 3D model and virtual reality, which enables our tenants to walk into their future office already today, before the start of actual construction,” Ilze Reira said, in describing the full service Kapitel is providing. Sales and Customer Relations Manager Ilze Reira joined the Kapitel team recently. She has extensive experience in commercial real estate area (14 years in brokerage services and advisory and project management).

The first phase of Elemental Skanste office complex (www.elemental.lv) will see the completion of two office buildings with 10-storey towers containing 20,500 m² of leasable office space and 367 parking spaces. Standard floors have 1,100 m² of rentable office space and a height of over 3 metres (3 m from raised floor to suspended elements and 3.3 m from raised floor to ceiling). Both towers will accommodate 700-800 working places. During the following stages, three more office buildings are planned to be built with the total leasable office space of about 20,900 m² plus a multi-story parking garage in the middle of the complex.

BREEAM (www.breeam.com) is a building assessment and certification system that has been developed and maintained in the United Kingdom. The certificate is granted to buildings that have the least negative impact on the environment. All stages of the process are evaluated, starting with the development of the project, continuing throughout the construction process and, finally, by putting the building into operation. The use of BREEAM standards in the development of real estate is the cornerstone of a modern and responsible construction.

Kapitel (www.kapitel.ee), previously known as E.L.L. Real Estate, is one of the Baltics’ largest real estate companies, and it has been engaged in developing and managing retail, hotel and office buildings for more than 20 years. The group currently owns and manages over 185,000 m² of leasable space. The company owns four office buildings (Delta Plaza and Sõpruse Ärimaja office buildings in Tallinn, Narbuto 5 in Vilnius and I.P. Pavlova 5 in Prague) and various leading shopping centres (Spice and Spice Home in Riga, Panorama in Vilnius and part of Viru Keskus in Tallinn). The company also owns two hotels in Tallinn.