‘The lack of a clear-cut classification of business centers is still a problem. When putting up a building like this, the developers usually use the criteria elaborated by the ‘Big Four’: Colliers International, Cushman & Wakefield / Stiles & Riabokobylko, Jones Lang Lasalle, and CB Richard Ellis / Noble Gibbons. These are the criteria that allow the developers, the investors, the consultants, and the brokers to classify a business center as belonging to class A, B+, or B- and they are naturally based on the tenants’ needs,’ says RED Management Company’s Deputy GD Andrei Braude.

‘Giving a building the class A status is often a window-dressing effort. There was even a class A business center that didn’t have any parking lots whatsoever,’ he explains.

There are currently three class A business centers in Yekaterinburg, including RED’s Senate and Palladium.

‘Yekaterinburg’s centers are rather underused in comparison with Moscow-based ones. The federal tenants, who the class A business centers are largely targeted at, tend to expose a lot of distrust for regional developers, so going through with a renting agreement might take about as much as six months,’ Braude notes.

‘At the moment, a building gets classified just once. This is not a good thing, as there may emerge a better project with improved parking and technological know-how in just two or three years, so the business centers’ ratings should be flexible and floating,’ says Eurasia Logistic’s Customers Service Manager Alexander Perfilyev.

‘As buildings grow older, their class will go down. So no business center can keep up with the original classification for ever,’ Plaza-DevelopmentService Management Company’s CEO Dmitriy Agapkin remarks.