Zlota 44 update – Sept 08

As you can see, they have now completed the taller ground level for reception and commercial use as well as three upper floors. As I write they are busy laying the reinforcement for the 4th floor slab, many of the columns are already finished.

The daily grind on site is one of candy-stripe lorries full of concrete, tons of re-bar, pumping, leveling, formwork….move onto the next level. It really is a very meccano-like building site these days.

So far, so good, but I can’t help worrying that it is all going to grind to a halt and I’m going to be faced with X floors of an unfinished building waiting for someone to finish it off. What with the whole global munch-crunch and the investor’s shares having dropped from over 100 Euro to less than 20 in the last year it just leaves one with a sense of impending doom-gloom. Remember the Turkish white-elephant that is now reborn as “Blue City”? That was a few thousand tons of redundant concrete for years on end. Hopefully history is not about to repeat itself.

The investor held a big party last week, attended by Libeskind (the architect) and presumably other celebs. I didn’t find out what the party was for, to keep everyone interested, to encourage people to make their payments, to reassure perhaps? “We have every confidence that despite the global munch-bunch everything is going to just fine and we have full confidence in this project and its timely completion.”.

If this is anything like football, perhaps we should start taking bets about on which floor level works will stop? :) Like one of today’s sports headlines – “Ramos stays calm over job future”. Yeah, right!

Euro 2012 update

If true, this is very good news!

Up to this visit by Platini, all the media had been about how how badly prepared Poland was and how Scotland or Italy were chomping at the bit to take our place. It seems that Uefa don’t agree and not only are they happy with progress but we might even be able to grasp a bigger share of the games thanks to Ukraine’s relatively poor position.

I get the feeling, and I hope my stomach is right, that the earlier warnings of Uefa had some effect and that this government has finally got square behind the need for the country to make this happen.

I’m taking Euro 2012 very seriously, not only because of the football and the chance to be living through the tournament but also, perhaps more so, because in these days of economic crashes it is this kind of activity that will help Poland to stay where it is now, slightly ahead of the tidal wave of misery that is washing over the west and threatening to head this way.

Euro 2012 and all the activity that goes with it is exactly the kind of thing that will keep the country and potential investors thinking positively and that has to be a very good thing. We may be in the midst of an economic depression, but in Poland, there is at least one good reason to remain up-beat for the next 4 years, by which time this depression will have turned into the next boom!

Euro 2012 – death or glory

The state of Polish football