Tie Sosnowski, a real estate developer from Texas who spends most of his time in Sarajevo, wanted to build some offices in Moscow.

So, like anyone in his shoes would do, he privatized a print shop and built a factory. Then he set to work on the offices. Welcome to Moscow.

The announcement of the Courtyard on Novinsky office project last week may have looked like just another development. Until you take a closer look at Sosnowski's face – that look of relief – and at his life for the past three years.

It's not a huge project. In and of itself, its impact on the office market will not be big. But Sosnowski – tied loosely to the Crow family of companies, one of the world's largest real estate developers – is poised to become a major player here. That, admittedly, is only conjecture.

But the fact is that the diminutive size of the deal belies the Herculean efforts it took to get it done. In the world of real estate lore, it passes for high drama, complete with suspense and plot twists.

So, we'll start with the facts. The Courtyard on Novinsky, located at 20a Novinsky Bulvar, across the street from the American Embassy and behind some Stalin-era apartment blocks, will offer 3,625 sq. meters of class-A office space. The first 1,300 sq. meters will be available next January. The whole thing may be done by the end of 2001.

Now, on to the exciting stuff.

Jump back to 1997. Sosnowski runs a company called Anatole Development, operating in Sarajevo and Moscow and named after a hotel he helped build in Texas. That's where he's from – Dallas, home of the famous Crow family, whose money it's his job to spend. This is the same Crow family that owns Crow Holdings International, and which spun off the more commonly known Trammell Crow. But Sosnowski doesn't work for those companies. The money he invests in real estate developments comes directly from the Crows themselves.

(E-mail Building Blocks at sam@russiajournal.com.)