Toyota Subsidiary Invests in Construction
Burgeoning sales are leading car dealers to invest in real estate. The Russian subsidiary of Toyota Motor Corp. and its official dealer SP Business Car are launching their first development project. They will invest an estimated $500 million in a 200,000 sq. m. business park on a 15-ha. lot in the south of Moscow along the outer Ring Road near its intersection with Kashira Highway. Ninety-five percent of the space will be devoted to offices, with retail taking up the rest. The consulting firm Knight Frank is preparing the overall conception for the project after winning a tender for it.
The construction site is located near the Toyota and Lexus sales and service centers and the Yamaha service center. The first section of the Toyota center was opened last October and the second section is being completed now, bringing that complex's area to 66,000 sq. m.
OOO SP Business Car was founded in 1991. The Toyota Tsusho Corp., the Toyota trading arm, owns 92 percent in it, with the remainder of the stock in the hands of individual investors. Its receipts in 2006 totaled 20.8 billion rubles (about $790 million), according to the SPARK system.
Several Russian auto dealers are engaged in real estate development, usually for their own purposes. The Major holding, for example, announced the construction of a “sales village” on Novorizhskoe Highway in Moscow last March. In 2006, however, Mercedes Benz dealer Panavto co-invested with the Baltic hotel chain Reval in an 800-room hotel on 2nd Zvenigorodskaya St. in Moscow. Observers say that such expansion does not bring a monetary advantage with it. Toyota, however, is stretched to its limits within the car field, and needs new areas of investment.
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All the Article in Russian as of Jan. 23, 2008
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