Vattanac Capital Tower, a long-anticipated gleaming tower that dominates the city’s skyline from Monivong Boulevard, continues to attract tenants to its commercial office space.

The most recent tenants to occupy the building are Qatar Airways and investment company One Asia Capital, with Qatar occupying 180 square metres of office space and One Asia Capital taking 262 square metres.

Philip Scott, surveyor at CBRE Cambodia, calls the tower Phnom Penh’s most prestigious commercial space and a development of “unrivalled quality with an exclusive mixture of Grade A offices and luxury retail.”

Vattanac still does not have an official date for the opening of its retail podium, but sources confirmed that the first retail outlet to open would be UK-based Costa Coffee, which already has several branches in Phnom Penh, and is edging towards 3,000 branches worldwide.

Offices need nearby coffee shops, quipped Scott, who added that Vattanac’s basement-two car parking was fully functional. And while there was still some evidence of finishing work in the general area around the tower, the office space in Tower 1 was fully open and available for tenants, with Schindler Lifts and architectural, engineering consultants Arup, and Vattanac Bank poised to move in.

“This year we have more office space coming onto the Phnom Penh market than ever, and what that means is that we have achieved office market segmentation, giving current and future tenants much broader scope in terms of office choice,” Scott said

He added that current office supply in Phnom Penh, the best of which CBRE rates as Grade B+, is already full, and Vattanac’s entry to the market would set new benchmarks in terms of design, technology and environmental sustainability.

The tower’s first tenant, Vattanac Capital, took up occupation of 240 square metres of office space in early March, with a complete operations team whose job was to ensure that the office space was ready for business.

Twenty-three floors of the 39-storey Tower 1 are allocated to office space, with the remaining floors taken by luxury international hotel chain Rosewood Hotels and Resorts.

Due to open in 2015, the Rosewood will have 175 rooms and suites (as well as long-term lease apartments), and a sky deck that features unparalleled sprawling views of Phnom Penh.

Scott says, the building management system will ensure smooth operation of the building, which features an energy-saving insulated-glass unit (IGU) glazing system on the building’s façade.

“It’s the safest and most secure building in Phnom Penh,” Scott said, adding that the state-of-the-art elevator system provided by Swiss Schindler Elevator is also the most sophisticated of its kind in Cambodia, guaranteeing a wait of no more than 35 seconds for a four-metres-per-second ascent to any floor in the building.

The 188-metre Vattanac Tower was designed by TFP Farrells, and is LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design)Silver precertified, but is aiming for Gold certification, which would make it a member of a relatively small club of office spaces worldwide that meet the highest standards required by the United States Green Building Council.

“This is a great product, and we’re excited to watch the office space fill up with clients that want a premier location and a premium office from which to manage their Cambodia operations and establish themselves within a frontier market,” Scott said.