Three markets, one developer: what travels and what does not

SAVO works in three countries at the same time. There are projects on the Costa Blanca in Spain, in Vilnius in Lithuania and in a residential district in the Kyiv region in Ukraine. The question we are asked most often by people who meet the company in one of those markets is a fair one: how much of a developer actually carries over from one country to the next.

What travels between markets

What moves is the method, not the drawing. We run the full cycle inside the company: the land plot, the concept, the design, the construction, the sales, the commissioning, and the work on the territory that continues after people have moved in. That sequence belongs to the company rather than to a site, so it crosses a border without changing. A team that has taken a plot through every one of those stages knows where a project usually breaks. That knowledge is portable in a way a facade never is.

The second thing that travels is the standard we hold for the courtyard. We do not treat the space between the buildings as what is left over once the blocks have been placed. It is planned as a room of its own: closed to through traffic, planted, lit, with playgrounds, lawns and walking paths that somebody has to look after for years afterwards. The planting lists and the surfaces underfoot differ by country. The rule that the courtyard is designed rather than left over does not.

Third, the commercial ground floor. We set out to create whole environments for living rather than separate buildings, and that begins under the house: the units at street level hold what a resident needs on the way home — shops, a pharmacy, a cafe, a notary, a dental clinic. In our larger districts we operate several of those units ourselves. The reason is unromantic: an empty retail unit spoils a courtyard faster than almost anything else, and a developer who has to live with that result plans the ground floor differently.

What has to be decided locally

Architecture does not travel. Vilnius called for a European mid-rise in dark clinker brick with glazed stair towers, and that is what stands there. The Spanish project is drawn as something else entirely: light, open towards the water, organised around terraces and shade. Lifting either design onto the other site would produce a building that is wrong in both places.

Materials and the rules around them do not travel either. Each country has its own building code, its own fire and energy requirements, its own sequence of approvals and its own supply chains. A wall build-up that is ordinary in Lithuania has to be drawn again for a Mediterranean summer. Every market therefore means a local team, local engineers and a fresh set of consents.

The purchase itself is just as local. Who the buyer is, how the contract is arranged, which bank or notary sits in the middle, and what a buyer expects to have seen before signing all differ by market. In Ukraine our accent is finished housing: clients buy keys rather than promises. Elsewhere the customary sequence is not the same, and the honest position is that we adjust to the market.

Spain, Lithuania and Ukraine side by side

In Spain there is Villajoyosa Residence, in Villajoyosa on the Costa Blanca, in the province of Alicante next to Benidorm. It is at the design stage and what exists today is a set of project visualisations: a building near the sea against the Benidorm skyline, palms, a pool with sunbeds, rooftop terraces, and a master plan with a padel court and walking paths.

In Lithuania there is Lucky Homes by SAVO in Vilnius, built in two parts, Lucky Homes 1 and 2, on Gerosios Vilties g. 27, the same street as the registered address of the company. The apartment lines carry names of their own: HARMONIJA, ŽAISMAS, OAZĖ, ŠVELNUMAS. The grounds are landscaped, with hydrangeas, young trees and lawns between the buildings.

In Ukraine there is Evromisto by SAVO, a residential district in the Kyiv region. The Shchastia buildings stand there and a second phase of the district is in design. The courtyards are closed, with playgrounds, a fountain, a pool bowl and walking paths, and the ground floors hold shops, a pharmacy, cafes, a notary and a dental clinic. A replica of the Eiffel Tower stands in the courtyard beside the district sign, which is the European motif the district takes its name from.

Why none of the three is the home market

It would make for a simpler story to name one country as the home base and present the other two as expansion. We do not, because that is not how the company is arranged. The legal entity, UAB Savo investicija, is registered in Vilnius. The largest completed volume sits in a different country. The newest drawings on the table are Spanish. Each market has its own team working to the same cycle.

What can be stated plainly is the record. SAVO has been on the market since 2006. 320 000 m² have been built. 52 000 m² are in the active construction stage. 3 920 apartments have found their owners. Those figures belong to the group as a whole and we do not break them apart by country for effect.

The same logic explains the other businesses we run inside and around our districts: a dental clinic, the EuroGym sports club, the Flame restaurant, the Lucky Bagel cafe in Vilnius, Savoya Security, a European service company and Yellow Studio. Housing is not the whole of what we build; commercial, medical and sports buildings come with it. A district is only finished when the things inside it work, and that is the one judgement we apply in all three countries without adjustment.