Nordicum - Real Estate Annual Finland 2010 | Page 43

Living It Up

Suurpelto promises to put ‘unity’
back in community

A residential revolution is
in the making in Espoo.
Located near the crossing
of Ring II and Turku
road, a completely new
cityscape is being built with
innovation as the main
driver. Suurpelto is the first
of its kind, an information
community with a green
edge, ready to update the
Garden City concept into
the new millennium.

C

onstruction of two first
apartment buildings started in the summer of 2009.
Asuntosäätiö is building a right
of occupancy house and VVOyhtymä Oyj has started out with
rental housing, raising a low
energy apartment house in the
neighbourhood. In accordance
to the environmental mindset,
future construction will focus
on low energy solutions as well.
The first residents will move to
Suurpelto at the end of 2010.
“What is remarkable about
Suurpelto is that the infrastructure and the environment will
be all finished when the people
move in,” Olavi Louko, Technical Deputy Mayor for the City
of Espoo, describes the biggest
construction project in the Helsinki metropolitan area.

Target: 10,000 homes

Summer Time!

One million floor square metres
will be built in Suurpelto within an area of 325 hectares, of
which 89 hectares will be dedicated to parks where the residents and the people who work
in the area can go to relax and be
refreshed. Nearly 10,000 apartments and several thousand jobs
will be created.
The area will be built as
an undivided and compact entity where less infrastructure than
normal will be needed. Homes,
workplaces, culture, and pastime services will all be within walking distance.
Suurpelto is striving to be
a true e-community: under the
Living Lab concept, products
and services will be developed
and tested in everyday environments and genuine real-life situations with the residents contributing to the process. The aim
is to, in addition to creating better services and products, to
generate also totally new business opportunities.
Pekka Vikkula, the City’s
Suurpelto Project Manager, says
that the entire concept revolves
around the people: their needs,
hopes and expectations.
“We wanted to put the people in the centre of all planning
from the start – that is the best
way to make sure that the new
community is a success.”

A good example of this approach is Kookaksi, the unique
city centre of the new community. The city centre will be covered to allow for eternal summer – or at least according to
the master plan. Sustainable solutions will be utilised to make
sure that the innovation does not
prove too taxing for the environment. The most modern services, housing and business activities will be brought together in
the centre.
The planner guru Toni
Virkkunen refers to the eventual end result as “emotional infrastructure” – everything you
need within arm’s reach, the perfect heart for the community of
the future.
Kookaksi is made for
those people who respect and
value comprehensive and all-inclusive services that are available close by. Homes, companies,
schools, public and private services, venues and actors related
to cultural and pastime activities
will all be located in Kookaksi.
The project plans for
Kookaksi were completed at
the beginning of 2009 and discussions with various investors have ensued. In November,
it was confirmed that HOKElanto and Lemminkäinen are
among the main partners for the
project.

According to Pekka
Vikkula, the troubling economy has not impacted the project
too much:
“The sit-around-and-wait
period is over and the world is
moving again,” Vikkula says.
Olavi Louko agrees with this assessment, drawing a comparison
to Ruoholahti in Helsinki where
construction took off like a rocket after a slower initial phase:
“I believe we will see similar development in Suurpelto.”

Stand and Deliver
One of the perks of the e-community is advanced home delivery system. What this means in
practise is that apartment buildings, for example, will feature a
designated services space at the
lobby, which is a drop off / pick
up point for meals, medicine or
groceries.
“This is but one example
of the focus on services in Suurpelto,” Vikkula says, adding that
the new community wants to
help introduce an unprecedented level of service in Finland.
Another strong element
in Suurpelto is the international approach. Opinmäki International School offers education in
Finnish, Swedish and English. It
is hoped that also international families can find flats, jobs
and schools within a short distance here. b
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