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

The Riga City Construction Board has given the final approvals to the project design and the construction permit for Elemental Skanste two office buildings, developed by Kapitel. The company  is finalizing the construction tender with the constructors and the construction of the two 10-storey buildings is planned to begin this summer. The project has been also awarded with BREEAM sustainability certificate at the level of Excellent for the design process.  “Elemental Skanste is a huge and 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 the construction,“ said Andris Stankevičs, CEO of SIA Kapitel.  

The Riga City Construction Board has issued a final approvement for the project design to the issued the construction permit. “As soon as we have ended the negotiations and signed the agreement with the general contractor, we will start the construction. The construction period is planned around 20 months, which allows us to prognose the completion of the two-tower building in 2021,“ Andris Stankevičs added. 

The energy-efficient and sustainable Class A++ office buildings are designed based on the Building Information Modeling (BIM) principles and in line with the international BREEAM standard. Elemental Skanste is the first in Latvia to have positive Environmental Impact assessment (EIA) report from Environmental State Bureau. This is an important step in construction of office buildings, because higher quality standards are set. Just as well the project has reached the highest result in energy efficiency standards in Latvia with which passive house level is almost reached. At the same time the developer plans to reduce the risk of the tenants to be exposed to Volatile Organic Compound (VOC). 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, which has been awarded with 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 whose BREEAM rating score is close to outstanding rate,“ said Ilze Reira, Sales and Customer Relations Manager.  “We see that companies become more educated and instead of lowest costs and short-term view focus more on long-term efficiency and people as their main resource. In Elemental Skanste we create human-friendly, healthy and contemporary working environment with flexible office space and supporting services like work café, sports club, 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 in their future office already today, before the start of actual construction,“ Ilze Reira described the full service Kapitel is providing. 

Sales and Customer Relations Manager Ilze Reira joined Kapitel team recently. She has a wide experience in commercial real estate area (14 years in brokerage services and advisory and project management). 

The first phase of Elemental Skanste office complex 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 height over 3 meters (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 house in the middle of the complex. 

BREEAM is developed and maintained building assessment and certification system in the United Kingdom. The certificate is granted to the 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, previously known as E.L.L. Real Estate, is one of the Baltics’ largest real estate companies, and it is 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.