Lipscani Limbo: The art of revival
By Gijsbert Huijink
May 2005
If you happen not to be Romanian, how does one become successful here? There was a time when connections were everything, and many multinationals that moved to Romania in the early to mid 1990s would employ people purely for their contacts with the state. But being well connected does not mean as much as it did. Today, a multinational or Big 4 consultancy might emphasise the need for experienced management interacting with a dynamic and skilled middle management: teamwork, in trainer-speak. They might also cite the fact that keeping one eye peeled on the competition is equally important. And while Westerners are used to dealing with competition, many Romanian companies will not know competition until it hits them and they are left floundering, as Peter Jansen’s letter elsewhere in this issue of Vivid astutely points out.
Few companies - whether they be multinationals or small businesses, or anything in between - would dispute that you need guts, commitment and bucket loads of patience to withstand the rigours of doing business here and to come out on top. Patience isn’t something they teach you at MBA school though – rather, it is something that you pick up along the way. All the business plans, templates and models that have been successfully applied in other markets might be meaningless in Romania, without patience.
There comes a time though when you have to draw a line in the sand and say, resignedly, ‘Enough is enough’. That is how the many small businesses that have invested in Bucharest’s much-vaunted ‘old town’ - the Lipscani area - must be thinking. And who can blame them?
Residents and business owners of Lipscani who had watched their small narrow streets become snarled with traffic had long been lobbying the city to ban cars from the area. Few would deny that the area would be better off without cars. They were not reckoning on the city banning cars from the area completely, however, which is exactly what has happened. Without any prior consultation with residents or business owners, as it stands now the only vehicles that can enter Lipscani and the 57 streets that surround it are fire engines, ambulances and police cars, and cars run by secret police. Private car owners may only enter the area between the hours of 6.00 and 8.00 in the morning! As a result, what was one of Bucharest’s few successful commercial centres and a great example of the ingenuity and creativity of small business is being lost. What was once a thriving busy area is now all but empty, with trade down by as much as 75 per cent in many shops, restaurants and outlets.
Some people with legitimate interests in Lipscani speak of something more nefarious; that the crusade against all cars in the area is an attempt at driving out the residents and business owners who will sell their businesses for whatever they can back to the city, at which point prime properties will be passed on to “connections.”
But wait! Help is at hand, in the form of Adriean Videanu,
Bucharest’s newly elected mayor, who has said that his main aim is to
attract more foreign investment to the city. He will, no doubt, be encouraging
investors to visit the city and to take a look around. Mr Videanu, if you
are reading this, do the sensible thing and issue the good people of Lipscani
with legitimate parking stickers, won’t you? That will allow them to
come and go as they please, and to restore Lipscani to the pride of place
in Bucharest that it so richly deserves.
