ARTICLES LABELLED WITH TAG mall

Retail space deliveries will accelerate towards 200,000 square meters in 2018, as new projects and extensions are scheduled in ten medium-size towns and cities across Romania, but no significant delivery is scheduled in capital Bucharest this year, according to reports released by Cushman & Wakefield Echinox.

S Immo has completed the upgrade of the Sun Plaza shopping centre in Bucharest and reopened all reconfigured areas to the public. The €30 million remodelling has added 11,000 sqm of new retail space to the shopping centre.

By the end of 2017, total retail stock in the Warsaw agglomeration amounted to 1.76 million sqm, of which shopping centres accounted for 1.2 million sqm. Other formats include retail parks (276,000 sqm), standalone retail objects (212,000 sqm) and outlet centres (57,000 sqm). Approximately 85,000 sqm of space was delivered to the Warsaw retail market last year with the largest completed object being Galeria Północna (64,000 sqm). Furthermore, the saturation level in the shopping centre format totalled 472 sqm / 1,000 inhabitants and was the third lowest rate among the eight major metropolitan areas nationwide. JLL summarised 2017 on the retail market in the Warsaw agglomeration.

Multi Corporation, a pan-European fully integrated retail real estate service platform, recently acquired the asset and property management of Allee Centre. This shopping centre is located in the city-centre of Budapest and includes 46,700 sqm of retail space. Multi’s centre management team took over the management of Allee Centre on 1 January 2018, marking Multi’s first entry into the Hungarian retail real estate market. This is the fourteenth country in which Multi Corporation is developing its operations.

NEPI Rockcastle has acquired the Festival Sibiu mall project from Primavera Development for €21 million. Reff&Asociatii provided legal assistance for NEPI in signing this deal.

Hystead Limited, a UK company co-owned by Hyprop Investments Limited (Hyprop) and PDI Investment Holdings Limited (PDI), has acquired a 90% interest in two Croatian shopping centres. The purchase consideration net of €154.4 million asset-based finance is €129.1 million, of which Hyprop’s effective share is approximately €77.5 million. The two malls, namely City Center one Zagreb West and City Center one Zagreb East, are located in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia. The transaction is conditional upon approval of the Croatian competition authority and is expected to close at the end of March 2018.

Wing Zrt. has acquired a retail portfolio which includes the EuroCenter Óbuda shopping centre as well as two properties in the regional city of Szombathely. The company has over ten years of experience developing and managing retail properties and plans to carry out value-enhancing investments across the new portfolio with a particular focus on the Buda shopping centre. Wing intends to invest in improving the shopping centre’s existing strengths for both shoppers and tenants.

Union Investment has expanded its Polish shopping centre portfolio by making its first investment of this kind in Wrocław. The latest addition to open-ended real estate fund Unilmmo: Europa is Magnolia Park, which comprises some 100,000 sqm of retail space. Sold to Union Investment by Blackstone for around €380 million, the shopping centre is almost fully let, with leases having an average of 4.2 years to run. The shopping centre will continue to be managed by Multi after the sale. Cushman & Wakefield advised Union Investment on the transaction.

Aberdeen Asset Management has sold the King Cross shopping centre in Zagreb to SES Spar European Shopping Centers. The transaction price has not been disclosed.

Robust GDP growth, wage rises and price inflation are the drivers of retail sales across the CEE region, says Colliers International in its latest research report. Key findings of the report include: