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Soaking up the real estate market

Karlín Group nicely blends administrative with residential

By Curtis M. Wong
For The Prague Post
December 19th, 2007 issue

VLADIMÍR WEISS/THE PRAGUE POST
On the record: Karlín Group president Serge Borenstein says he is trying to make a "beautiful city more beautiful than it already is."
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COURTESY PHOTO
Big development: Real Estate Karlín Group's projects around the city include the well-regarded Corso II and Riverside Gardens.
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Real Estate Karlín Group
Palác Karlín
Thámova 11
Prague 8
Tel.: 420 266 727 611
Web: www.karlin.cz

For many investors, administrative and residential real estate are two distinctly different creatures, requiring separate areas of professional expertise and know-how. But Serge Borenstein, president of Real Estate Karlín Group, begs to differ. In fact, mixing administrative and residential properties is fast becoming his company’s specialty, and, he says, a strategic approach to state-of-the-art urban planning.
Of course, Borenstein knows a thing or two about taking seemingly incompatible ideas and making them work to his benefit.
After years of working in radio broadcasting, the Belgium native arrived in Prague shortly after the 1989 revolution and founded EastWest Media, a billboard advertising firm. But his lifelong passion for real estate soon beckoned, and in 1994, he sold his company to join forces with Real Estate Karlín Group.
Not surprisingly, the company’s focus is on the riverfront district in Prague 8 that shares its name. Although many properties in the area were devastated by the Vltava floods in 2002, Borenstein says that his company hopes to benefit from that negative experience by continuing to rebuild the area with new and improved infrastructure.
It looks like he and his company are off to a running start: Real Estate Karlín Group’s River Diamond project was recently named Best Residential Development of 2007 by Central & Eastern European Construction and Investment Journal. Elsewhere in Karlín, the firm will break ground on River Gardens, a new 100,000-square-meter administrative and residential project, by the end of the year, to be completed in phases over the next seven years.
Never one to rest on its laurels, the firm is also currently overseeing plans for a similar 100,000-square-meter project in Modřany, which it hopes to start building in 2009.
Recently, Borenstein spoke to The Prague Post about his company’s grand visions for a new and improved Karlín and why a background in public relations can go a long way in the world of real estate.
The Prague Post: Your company seems to be very focused on mixing administrative and residential space in your new developments in Karlín and elsewhere. Why do you feel that this combination is important in Prague’s urban development?
Serge Borenstein: Well, it goes against most real estate customs in many of the Western countries, but I think it works really well. I look at many of the modern districts in a city like Brussels, and in some ways, these districts have been completely devastated by developers in my opinion. Any area that’s dedicated solely to office space becomes a total desert each day by 5 p.m. By mixing residential, retail and administrative space, we’re hoping to create a brand new district. In Western Europe, a mixed city is not something that’s considered ideal for real estate development, and I think it’s a mistake. I think a mix of office developments and residential developments should coexist these days. It makes your life at home and at the office much more pleasant. For me, it’s a kind of a goal for me to prove that this mix can be achieved within a city. When it comes to public services, I think Karlín is one of the most, if not the most, developed and equipped areas in all of Prague. It’s going to undergo a bit of a revival in the next few years. In three or four years’ time, it’s going to be one of the most modern and established districts in the city.
TPP: Based on your personal experience, how would you compare the real estate industry in the Czech Republic to that in Belgium and Western Europe?
SB: I believe that everything has been done in a much more orderly fashion here in Prague than it was in Western Europe over the past 30 years. I believe that real estate investors took advantage and learned from the mistakes that they made in many Western cities. I think that Czechs understand that they have serious capital in their monuments and architecture, and they’ve tried to protect it by prohibiting demolition of things and so on. If it had been in France or in Belgium, it would have been demolished a very long time ago. I have a lot of respect for that, and I think it’s very positive.
TPP: What would you say is the biggest challenge about working in the Czech real estate industry?
SB: For me, personally, it’s to try to make a beautiful city even more beautiful than it already is. First of all, it’s a pleasure to work in a city that’s one of the nicest capitals in the world – it’s actually very motivating for me. I take it as a gift, and I try to always respect that. To be a developer isn’t a game, and the idea isn’t just to stack bricks on top of old bricks as quickly as possible. We always try to select the best architects and to keep the level of architecture in our projects very high. That’s my way of giving thanks and respecting the city in a way. We’re a small company with a small number of people who are doing great things.
TPP: How would you say that your professional skills and priorities evolved over the course of your career?
SB: The start of my career was in a completely different realm. It was actually in radio. I wasn’t a journalist per se, but I worked for the first private FM radio station in Brussels. In a way, radio drove me to residential real estate. I can summarize the secret of working in real estate: You need to know who needs what and when. Believe it or not, this is quite similar to what I learned in radio. In radio, you also realize the importance of political contacts, so I really developed in this capacity. Finally, I was able to develop personal methods to work within the business community. I’d been successful in radio, so I wanted to do something else. So in a way, the transition from my work in radio to real estate came about quite naturally.
TPP: What advice would you give to someone who’s interested in breaking into the Czech real estate industry as a newcomer?
SB: The Czech Republic has a lot of major cities that will experience a lot of growth in the future, so my advice would be to invest there. If you were to ask someone to name a city in the Czech Republic several years ago, they might not know another city outside of Prague. But now, cities like Brno, Plzeň and Ostrava are getting a lot of recognition internationally. That’s where it looks like the next big real estate boom is going to be.

Curtis M. Wong can be reached at specialsection@praguepost.com


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