How we saved the plan for 312 apartments
In November 2023, a housing investment in Poznań's Naramowice was called into question by one documentation error from a decade ago. Casacombug Urban Lobby took over the case at a point when the developer was already losing 14,300 PLN a day just from the delay in loan servicing. Our task was to unblock the process in the office and lead to the issuance of a building permit for 312 apartments before the end of the budget year.
Deadlock and 19 months of waiting
The investor came to us after their application for development conditions had been stuck at a deadlock for exactly 19 months and 4 days. Officials from the Urban Planning and Architecture Department in Poznań questioned access to a public road, although formally everything seemed to be in order. In reality, the problem was an unclear interpretation of records in an old development study, which left room for discretion. The developer was tired of sending more letters that returned with the same laconic response about the need to supplement gaps.
The situation was difficult because the 2.47-hectare plot generated huge maintenance costs. At Casacombug Urban Lobby, we know that in such moments, pretty words won't help, only hard facts and knowing procedures inside out. We analyzed 47 pages of comments that the office had reported so far. It turned out that 12 of them were groundless in light of current administrative court jurisprudence. Concrete facts on the table: we had to prove to the office that their requirements exceeded applicable law.
We know these procedures, so instead of waiting for another round of correspondence, we prepared a legal-urban audit in 11 business days. In it, we demonstrated that the neighboring plot number 14/3 had been treated differently in an analogous process two years earlier. This inconsistency in the office's decisions was our main argument. The paperwork must be correct, and in this case, officials had omitted a key record from 2014 that changed the status of the access road.
The developer was losing 14,300 PLN a day waiting for a decision that should have been issued a year earlier.
No unnecessary moves in the office
We began our actions with a meeting at the office on Święty Marcin, where we set a plan for the next 3 weeks. The first step was scheduling a visit with the department director. We didn't go there with a request, but with a specific calculation of procedural errors. The meeting took place on October 14 at 10:15 AM and lasted exactly 2 hours and 14 minutes. We presented a traffic analysis that unequivocally indicated that the planned 312 apartments would not paralyze the nearby transport hub, which was the officials' main concern.
It often happens that developer projects in Poznań fail because no one can speak the language of technical concrete facts with the people responsible for infrastructure. We have it in our blood. We prepared a new target map that accounted for a small shift of the entrance by 3.2 meters to the left. This one simple solution, which no one had thought of before, resolved the conflict with the municipal road authority. Instead of fighting the system, we found a loophole that allowed officials to issue a positive decision without losing face.
At Casacombug Urban Lobby, we don't play diplomacy for diplomacy's sake. If we know we are right, we enforce it point by point. In the following 9 business days, we obtained all missing approvals from utility operators. We utilized our relationships and knowledge of who actually makes decisions at specific desks. These are not any magic tricks, just solid operational work that developers often don't have time to perform themselves.
Numbers that saved the budget
Thanks to our intervention, a process that according to officials was to last at least another 8 months, we closed in 43 days. The building permit was signed on December 12, 2023. For the investor, this meant the possibility of starting earthworks before the frost, which saved another 124,000 PLN in machine downtime costs. The project of 312 apartments with a total usable area (PUM) of 16,480 m2 became real, and the bank extended the credit line on more favorable terms, seeing the final decision.
It is worth emphasizing that our fee represented only 4.7% of the savings we generated for the client just in the area of bank interest. This shows that professional urban lobbying is not a cost, but an investment with a high rate of return. We effectively guided the project through offices because we focused on technical solutions, not politicking. At Casacombug Urban Lobby, the end result counts, not the number of emails sent.
Ultimately, the investment started with full force in January 2024. Today, 67 people are working on the construction site, and apartment sales launched in March. The investor, Mr. Andrzej Marciniak from West-Bud, admitted later that without our help he probably would have listed this plot for sale at a loss. That would have been a mistake because the potential of this place was huge, just stifled by administrative impotence. We simply removed the blockage.
We closed in 43 days a process that according to officials was to last another 8 months.
What does this story teach?
Every developer in Poznań should know that officials are also people who need clear backing for their decisions. If you give them messy documentation, they will reject it for peace of mind. If you come with a ready-made, lawful solution that doesn't expose them to neighbor complaints, they will sign the paperwork faster than you think. Our role is precisely to prepare this path. No unnecessary moves and no empty promises.
The paperwork must be correct from the first to the last page. In the case of Naramowice, our meticulousness was the key. We caught a naming error in one of the streets in a 2008 document, which caused errors in the office's IT system. After correcting this one typo, the system 'let' the application through. These are details on which even the biggest players on the market trip up if they don't have the support of someone who sits in this daily.
If you have a plot that 'sits' in the office for longer than 6 months without a clear reason, it's a sign that you need an external audit. At Casacombug Urban Lobby, we do not take on every case. If we see that a project is legally indefensible, we tell you straight to your face at the first meeting. But if there is a chance, we fight to the end. This case with 312 apartments proved that even the most tangled procedures can be straightened out if one has the right arguments.
