Following a 200 million-euro investment, which began back in2006, the Sun Plaza mall is on the finishing straight, with theshopping centre's developer reconfirming its intention to open itnext month.
The first BauMax store in Bucharest, the first mall one can stepinto straight from the Bucharest underground, and the first Zarastore in southern Bucharest are just a few of the novelties broughtabout 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 revisedfor the third year in a row. So, after businessman GabrielPopoviciu inaugurated Baneasa Shopping City in 2008 in northernBucharest (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 theproject's 80,000 square-metre lettable area.
"The planned launch of Sun Plaza on February is reconfirmed andstands. The launch date will be announced very soon, when the timeis right, in line with the our commercial and communicationstrategy," Michael Richard, general manager of EMCT, the project'sdeveloper, told ZF.
EMCT is developing the project for Austrian company SparkassenImmobilien, owner of Novotel hotel in Bucharest, subsidiary of theErste group, which owns BCR.
The mall has had an over 90% occupancy rate ever since lastautumn, with its biggest tenants to be Cora, BauMax, Mobexpert, andCinema City.
As far as fashion retailers are concerned, the developers of SunPlaza 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, bringingtogether the bulk of foreign retailers present on the Romanianmarket.
The shopping centre will have around 150 stores in all, withannual sales estimated to amount to 300-400 million euros. In orderto achieve this level of sales, developers hope to attract anaverage of 40,000 visitors a day into the project, with retailerspaying fixed rent, and developers getting a percentage of thesales, if they exceed a certain threshold.
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