Euroview held a breakfast press conference announcing the start of construction on a large distribution park in the Czech capital. A table of industrial agents hovered around a table, worrying about empty spaces in metal boxes. Finally however, the buffet bins were filled with hot breakfast dishes - the speculation was over. There was far less concern that Euroview's Southpoint project, set to sprawl at exit 15 of the D1 highway, would remain vacant, if indeed it goes ahead on spec as Simon Hooper, of Euroview managers Europa Capital, claims it will. Euroview is a joint venture between the Europa Fund and Abu Dhabi-based Tamweelview Holdings. The park is planned to eventually offer four distribution centers, totaling 187,000 sqm of warehousing and attached office on the 45 ha site. Roman ≈òehak of developing partner Pinnacle announced that 70,000 cubic-meters of earth will be moved in the zero phase that began in September. Work on building A, constituting 9,000 sqm of the first distribution center on the park, will begin in mid-autumn he says, and should be occupied by early summer 2006. The remainder of the center, bringing total space in the first phase to 37,000 sqm, is planned to come online in July 2006. Southpoint is Euroview's third logistic park project in Prague. It sold Westpoint to Immoeast in 2004, while Northpoint on the D8 will enter its third phase in the autumn. ≈òehak says that the acquisition phase for Southpoint has been ongoing since 2002, with 65 different land titles needing to be dealt with. Environmental impact studies have been completed he says and there are plans to develop the local infrastructure; work on the water mains and financing of sewerage facilities will be "typical examples of PPPs" he claimed. Investment in Southpark is estimated to be around €62 million. Hooper says that the support of financer HVB is crucial in allowing the project to go ahead on spec. ≈òehak remarked that experience on the Northpoint project suggests that industrial facilities started on spec "will very quickly attract serious interest." Hooper admits that thus far, around 10 percent of Northpoint has been built on spec. Still, that's 10 percent more than others are offering, as vacancy in industrial space remains minimal, and developers continue to wait for instruction before building. Euroview's motivation to go on spec says Hooper, is that this allows them to achieve much better conditions on contracts compared with pre-leases. He estimates that rents will start at €4 per sqm, but points out that so many elements in a contract influence the price that it's "almost impossible to have an asking price". "We'll probably put all the ground works in to begin with," Hooper continues, "then it's ready to go above ground when needed. In fact, we may just go ahead above ground anyway, that doesn't cost that much. It costs much more to get to that point." Presently, it's just the first 9,000 sqm that is actually due to be built on spec. "Although we'll see what happens," claims Hooper. "It could be that expands to 39,000 sqm." So if Southpoint does come online with space up for grabs, are other developers going to make similar moves? The guess of industrial agents is evidently that the Southpoint sheds are going to find themselves occupied well before delivery. "We shall see," remarked one when asked if Southpoint will really break ranks with the pre-lease obsessed industrial development market.