Developer EURO Styl is planning a 14,000-sqm office building called Centaurus in Olsztyn Courtesy of Jones Lang LaSalle

The Polish office market is dominated by the nine major office locations of Warsaw, Kraków, Wrocław, Tri-city, Katowice, Poznań, Łódź, Lublin and Szczecin, but new research shows that a number of emerging destinations in the country are also increasingly attracting investors’ attention.

According to the “New Office Locations in Poland” report by Jones Lang LaSalle, the office market is evolving and the regional cities of Rzeszów, Kielce, Białystok, Opole, Bydgoszcz, Olsztyn, Toruń and Radom have emerged as start-up and alternative destinations.

Demand for office space in these locations is mainly generated by local companies seeking more functional and prestigious offices and external investors, including business services sector firms that are escaping large-city competition and looking for a qualified workforce and cost-effectiveness.

“Service centers are beginning to compete with each other in talent retention, which increases the costs and distracts them from their core business. Therefore, companies are seeking alternative, attractive locations,” John Duckworth, JLL’s managing director in Poland and CEE, said in a statement.

Source: Jones Lang LaSalle

Over 57,600 sqm of office area is under construction in the cities examined in the report, most of which can be found in Olsztyn (15,400 sqm) and Radom (13,000 sqm). An additional 114,000 sqm of space is in the pipeline.

The Jones Lang LaSalle research also found that new class-A and class-B+ projects are appearing in several other cities with populations of around 100,000, with Nowy Sącz, Zielona Góra and Częstochowa some of the most notable examples of the trend.