Cornerstone Ceremony in Leszno at the threshold of the city's investment zones

I.D.E.A. is today the main field of investment play in Leszno - an extensive zone in the south-eastern part of the city, connected by Geodetow Street to national road number 5, with over a hundred local and foreign-capital firms. Makers of pumps and fittings, technical plastics semi-finished products, window and door joinery and building materials are putting up further halls here, although few free plots remain. That is why the start of every new build in this zone carries real weight: a certain stage of the city's growth comes to a close. We run the cornerstone ceremony here to reflect that significance - with a foundation act, a time capsule and an official part attended by the city authorities and representatives of the zone.

On a site like this, coordination with the contractor and the zone's infrastructure is what counts: we settle where on the plot the stage and the foundation for the symbolic stone will stand, how to guide guests from the Business Incubator or the plant gate, and how to separate the working area from the ceremonial one. For an investor in the Walbrzych SEZ INVEST-PARK sub-zone, the ceremony can also form part of the message to the institutions granting reliefs - showing that the declared investment is genuinely under way. We fit each such Leszno cornerstone ceremony into the construction calendar so that it does not clash with the works, while still being documented in photo and video.

VASA is the oldest industrial zone of Leszno, in the north-western part of the city, where thousands of people work and free plots ran out long ago. For the plants operating here - sleep-comfort manufacturing, processing, carton-making - a cornerstone laying most often accompanies expansions: a new line, a warehouse, a hall added to an existing complex. We then run the ceremony within a working production environment, where the official part, the foundation act and the moment of laying must fit alongside the plant's operations, with full respect for safety rules on site.

Opposite, on the border with the Swieciechowa and Lipno municipalities, the city is opening a third business-activity zone - a response to I.D.E.A. and VASA filling up. It is terrain where the coming years will bring production, warehousing and services, and so further construction starts. We treat a ceremony on such freshly launched ground as the investor's first public event in this part of Zatorze: we build the staging from scratch, because no ready infrastructure exists yet, we set up the stage, sound and facilities on open ground, and we finalise guest logistics together with the investor and the ZIT LOF coordinator.

A good many foreign-capital firms have passed through the Leszno zones, and the special economic sub-zone with its tax reliefs keeps attracting further investors from outside Poland. For such a company, laying a cornerstone is often its first public event in a new country - the moment when the board from head office meets the Leszno authorities, partners and the media. We then run the ceremony bilingually: the running order, the speeches, the wording of the foundation act and the compering all work in parallel in Polish and in the investor's language, so that neither the guests from abroad nor the local community fall out of step.

We take care of the details that shape a foreign investor's first impression of the city: a clear protocol for welcoming the local authorities, a correctly drafted document placed in the capsule, and photo and video suitable for communication at head office and in local newsrooms. We serve Leszno mindful that such a ceremony can be the seed of a company's relationship with the city for years to come - and that the first symbolic stone will be remembered by engineers from abroad and town-hall officials alike.