Biggest mall in Bucharest to be opened in a month's time

Following a 200 million-euro investment, which began back in 2006, the Sun Plaza mall is on the finishing straight, with the shopping centre's developer reconfirming its intention to open it next month.

The first BauMax store in Bucharest, the first mall one can step into straight from the Bucharest underground, and the first Zara store in southern Bucharest are just a few of the novelties brought about by Sun Plaza in Bucharest's Piata Sudului (South Square).

This will be the biggest shopping mall to be opened this year, with the ranking of the biggest malls in Bucharest to be revised for the third year in a row. So, after businessman Gabriel Popoviciu inaugurated Baneasa Shopping City in 2008 in northern Bucharest (55,000 square-metre lettable area), while Cotroceni Park (over 76,000 square metres) was opened in the autumn of last year, the opening of the Sun Plaza project will set a new record with the project's 80,000 square-metre lettable area.

"The planned launch of Sun Plaza on February is reconfirmed and stands. The launch date will be announced very soon, when the time is right, in line with the our commercial and communication strategy," Michael Richard, general manager of EMCT, the project's developer, told ZF.

EMCT is developing the project for Austrian company Sparkassen Immobilien, owner of Novotel hotel in Bucharest, subsidiary of the Erste group, which owns BCR.

The mall has had an over 90% occupancy rate ever since last autumn, with its biggest tenants to be Cora, BauMax, Mobexpert, and Cinema City.

As far as fashion retailers are concerned, the developers of Sun Plaza sealed contracts with companies such as Inditex (Zara, Bershka, Pull and Bear, and Stradivarius brands), New Yorker, GAP, C&A, Orsay, Marks & Spencer, and Deichmann, bringing together the bulk of foreign retailers present on the Romanian market.

The shopping centre will have around 150 stores in all, with annual sales estimated to amount to 300-400 million euros. In order to achieve this level of sales, developers hope to attract an average of 40,000 visitors a day into the project, with retailers paying fixed rent, and developers getting a percentage of the sales, if they exceed a certain threshold.