On 30 March 2004, the City of Helsinki Real Estate Committee (REC) decided to make a radical exception to the usual method of allocating public land for residential purposes. It digressed from the city's conventional practice of leasing land for housing, and decided instead to sell it for developers in a prestigious seaside location in south Helsinki. At the beginning of the 20th century, the area in question was nothing but a rocky shore of the Baltic Sea. From the 1930s until the early 2000s the location saw light industrial use as a wastewater management site and a city depot. But change in the land use plan was made in 2001, and the area was zoned for residential use. A stone's throw from the city centre and next to the bourgeois neighbourhood of Eira and the gentrified old working-class neighbourhood of Punavuori, Eiranranta bordered the most expensive residential neighbourhoods in Helsinki. The site had great potential – either for alleviating both the shortage of affordable housing in the city centre and segregation, or for tapping into tremendous land values.

A request for tenders for four sites was opened on 16 December 2004. The terms of the bidding competition stipulated that the highest offer would win. The City Council emphasised, however, that only offers made by companies showing “exceptional expertise and competence in building” would be accepted. The City Council minutes of June 2005 state that “the highest offer will not guarantee the sale, but the Council should be convinced that the company has extensive experience to carry out extremely demanding development projects in the prestigious area”.