Cornerstone ceremonies in Stargard at the threshold of investment in Kluczewo

The Modern Technologies Industrial Park arose on the grounds of the post-Soviet air base in Kluczewo, and it is here that the largest undertakings driving industrial construction in the city are concentrated. Such a sprawling, serviced space along the former runways is at the same time a challenge for the organiser: the stage and official zone must be set up in the middle of open ground, the sound must be protected against the wind that sweeps unobstructed across the flat airfield, and guests must be led from the plant gate to the spot where the founding act will rest.

For a ceremony in Kluczewo we plan the logistics around a real building site: we agree the cornerstone zone, the approach for the delegation and the place for equipment with the general contractor, so that the ceremony does not clash with the works. We frame a cornerstone ceremony in Stargard on the special economic zone subzone with the awareness that the guests include representatives of the foreign investor, the zone managers and the city authorities, and each of these groups expects a different part of the protocol.

What sets a Stargard cornerstone apart from a ceremony by a town hall is the terrain: the concrete slabs of the former runways, the lack of any natural shelter from the wind and the dust rising from the active building site. We therefore set the sound system with a power reserve and windshields on the microphones, so that the investor's speeches are not lost in the gusts off the open airfield. We roof or enclose the official zone and the place where the capsule is laid, so that the presentation copy of the founding act does not suffer from the dust and the delegation in suits has a sheltered assembly point in the middle of the excavated plot.

We conduct the founding act itself with that specific ground in mind: the time capsule and the cornerstone are laid in the foundations at a pace agreed with the general contractor, and the guest approaches are routed along the hardened fragments of the former airfield, skirting the work zones. The compere adjusts the rhythm of the ceremony to the conditions of the site, so that the signing of the act, the placing of the capsule and the symbolic walling-in proceed smoothly before the weather over the exposed space can change. A cornerstone ceremony in Stargard run this way looks assured despite the difficult, industrial surroundings.

Stargard's investment sites fall into two different worlds, and it is they that set the scale of the ceremony. Sprawling Kluczewo on the former airfield receives the large plants, where a cornerstone gathers delegations from foreign head offices, the zone manager and the city authorities, and the setting must carry the open space and the international company. It looks different in the Stargard Industrial Park in the north-western part of the city, where smaller companies invest and the construction of a hall or office building is an equally important but more intimate moment.

For each of these zones we design a different course. In Kluczewo we focus on coordinating a multilingual gathering, distributing the speeches between the investor, the zone manager and the city, and on coverage for the media keen to describe each new factory. In the SME park we keep the full protocol, the founding act, the time capsule, the official part, but in a lighter, more intimate setting cut to a smaller number of guests. We therefore finalise a cornerstone ceremony in Stargard for the specific zone, not for a universal scheme.