Next March is the scheduled date for the opening of a giant shopping and entertainment center called Blue City, located on Jerozolimskie Avenue in Warsaw. The 186,000-square-meter complex will consist of three parts: a shopping mall, a three-star hotel and offices which will be completed at a later date.

The first part to open will be the shopping mall, with 200 stores and an entertainment center. According to Yoram Reshef, head of the managing staff of Blue City, the mall will be an exceptional and ultra modern place combining digital technology with sports and music. The entertainment center-with a surface area of 5,000 sq m-will house video games, billiard tables, bars, restaurants and discos. The organizer of the entertainment center is MagiCorp. Other planned facilities include an interior design store, a car showroom and a medical clinic. Seventy-five percent of the commercial area is already rented.

Interest among tenants is sizable, matching this unique and impressive mall. The top of its seven floors of shopping galleries is an enormous glass dome, 55 m above the ground floor. The floors will be connected by escalators and a panoramic elevator. Next to the elevator is a fountain with a 26-meter spray. The fountain will be the centerpiece of the mall's main square, which for now is still unfinished, but already provides an impressive view of the surrounding galleries. The structure forms a monumental and spacious enclosed space, pure in terms of composition and proportions.

The thorough redevelopment of Blue City is taken care of by the APA Wojciechowski architecture studio, which is working on the project together with American architects from the Laguarda Low design office. The construction of the complex was started a few years ago by Turkish investors related to the Reform Company and Sabri Bekdas-the man behind the idea for the Blue City project. Then, the developer company collaborated with a group of investors who do business primarily on the American market. Two Dutch companies, Singspiel Investeringen B.V. and Anandrous B.V. purchased 51 percent of the stock. These companies are owned by Albert Nasser and his family-owners of the Congress Hotel in Chicago and office buildings in New York City-the Nakash brothers, owners of the textile company Jordache, and Amnon Shiboleth, a lawyer and real estate owner.

The new investors entrusted the redevelopment and organization of the mall to experienced manager Yoram Reshef, who is credited for the success of Galeria Mokotów. Reshef is not planning to open a supermarket in Blue City and is going to reduce the amount of food products to a minimum. As in Galeria Mokotów, he has prepared a detailed rental plan which takes into consideration the most accurate of particular sectors.

Underneath the building is a parking lot for 2,600 cars and a tunnel which leads under the busy thoroughfare of Jerozolimskie Avenue, providing quick passage to the shopping mall and supermarket Reduta.

The general contractor of Blue City is Warbud. Next year, a three-star hotel is expected to open in one of the two wings surrounding the central shopping rotunda. The operator of the hotel is Barceló-a Spanish hotel chain that manages around 50 hotels in South America, the United States, the Iberian Peninsula and islands of the Mediterranean Sea. The chain also has one hotel in Prague.