Occupancy rates in Moscow's office facilities have increased considerably, and in some cases have even reached 100 percent, according to top city real-estate agents.

The trend has borne out realtors' hopes that overall improvements in the national and local economy would reflect significantly on the real-estate market. And for a sector that has struggled to climb out of the post-crisis doldrums, it is welcome news.

"With the improvements in the local investment climate becoming more and more consolidated, occupancy in the office-space market segment is bound to rise as more and more companies take up space," said Oleg Myshkin, director of Colliers International, a leading real-estate agency in Moscow. "[They want to be] in a good position to maximize the emerging advantages of the local financial market, seen as the only promising oasis in a global economy tilting toward recession."

Realtors cite relatively new properties – such as Golutvinsky Dvor and the Timura Frunze Business Complex – as good examples of the trend, where a combination of the right facilities, including flexible floor plans, modern infrastructure and amenities and plenty of parking, brings strong demand. As a result, both properties have been fully leased, according to Yelena Andreyeva, a property consultant at Noble Gibbons/CB Richard Ellis.

Golutvinsky Dvor, a 13,000-sq.-meter Class-A project at the Golutvinskaya Sloboda Complex on the Yakimanskaya Embankment, was opened in May 2000, and, by June 2001, it was almost 90 percent leased, with tenants including Banque Societe Generale Vostok, LG Electronics, Glaxo SmithKline, Renaissance Insurance and Vneshtorgbank, which snatched up the last available block in September, Andreyeva said.

Besides Golutvinsky Dvor, the Golutvinskaya Sloboda complex has five other properties, including an administrative building, a multi-level garage for 450 vehicles, a refurbished administrative building and two former factory buildings with 4,000 sq. meters and 9,000 sq. meters of space on offer, respectively, she said.

The Timura Frunze Business Complex, at 24 Ulitsa Timura Frunze, just off the Garden Ring and a five-minute walk from the Park Kultury metro station, was a largely Italian project, designed by Interstudio and built by Codest, both Italian companies. The 8,700-sq.-meter office facility, which offers state-of-the-art amenities, including central air-conditioning and a sprinkler system, currently houses Microtest, Sony C.I.S. and Nycomed, as well as other tenants.

The success of those projects bodes well for developers preparing to launch construction of new buildings.

Sadovaya Plaza, a 15-level business center at 7-9 Dolgorukovskaya Ulitsa, just off the Garden Ring, will be ready in December, with the first tenants expected to move in by January of next year, said Erkan Erkek, marketing director for Moscow office developments at Turkey-based developer Enka.

When Sadovaya Plaza finally hits the market, Enka will have spent more than $220 million on 133,000 sq. meters of office space throughout the city, he added.

Sadovaya Plaza, which has a gross area of 19,286 sq. meters, will offer 12,762 sq. meters of rentable office space on 14 floors and another 405 sq. meters earmarked for a cafeteria.

Though the building has yet to be completed, negotiations with future tenants, mostly international companies, have been concluded. Erkek refused to disclose their names.

Tenants currently using other Enka facilities in Moscow include Arthur Andersen, Pricewater-houseCoopers, Hewlett Packard, Canon, Unilever, General Electric, JP Morgan, Alcon, Quest, Proctor & Gamble, Pfizer, Compaq, Dow Chemical, Western Union and TNK-Texaco.

Another property enjoying increased attention from the business community is the Sistema Hals Tower on Tverskaya-Yamskaya Ulitsa, Myshkin said. Indeed, agents who gathered at the opening ceremony for the 14-floor Class-A building in October said the demand outweighs the supply, as even unfinished properties are swamped with offers.

Accordingly, Sistema Hals Director Felix Yevtushenkov gave realtors specific instructions: "I would like to ask you to hurry up with your offers on this property because we plan to market it en bloc – a whole floor, or, at least, two tenants to a floor. As it is a top-quality property, we don't expect it to stay on the market for long."