Iasi businessman Iulian Dascalu has won the tender to build a mall in Cluj-Napoca, his third after Iasi and Timisoara. Iulius Group, the company held by Iulian Dascalu, was selected as the winner of the tender for the concession of a 7 hectare plot of land in Cluj yesterday, on which a shopping complex is to be built. Another competitor for this project was South East Euromentor, whose shareholders include a businessman from Cluj, Arpad Paszkany.
Paszkany was surprised by the result of the tender. "I cannot say anything until I receive official notification.
"Only then will our shareholders decide whether to challenge the decision or not. I am thinking there must be sound arguments behind the decision made by the County Council.
"I''d be very curious to know how they arrived at this decision," Paszkany stated.
Ioan Petran, the chairman of the tender committee, said that in order to select the winner, every councillor made their own evaluation. "The Iulius Group had a bigger score on 80% of the requirements. We will notify the companies of the result of the tender and then they will have 10 days to challenge the result; the contract will be signed only after that," he explained.
After completing the project in Cluj, Dascalu will own more than 200,000 square metres of space used for retail and for retail-related operations. Moreover, the businessman said that the group he runs intends to develop a similar project next year, with locations in southern Romania like Constanta or Galati being targeted after Cluj.
?"We are expecting an official notification to sign the contract, and then get to work. We will begin construction next spring and the mall will be erected in 20 months as specified in our bid. The works will be conducted by companies in the Cluj area because there is no other way to handle a construction this size. The value of the investment will stand at 48 million euros," Iulian Dascalu told ZF TRANSILVANIA. He added that the idea to build a mall in Cluj had been among the company''s plans for two or three years, and "the time has finally come to put this into practice."
To fund this project, the businessman will turn to banking loans as he did for his other two investments.
"Everywhere in the world, these things are done with a contribution from the company, but especially with a contribution from banks, which know such ventures represent profitable investments. Our business plan anticipates the investment to be amortised in 15 years, but I think it will amortise in somewhere around 10 years," Dascalu added.
Iulius Mall Iasi entailed a 7.6 million euro investment at the time of its opening in 2000, with part of the investment funded by Emporiki Bank. The shopping complex was expanded this year following a 6 million euro investment, with the funding provided, again, by Emporiki Bank. However, 80% of the funds used for building Iulius Mall Timisoara came from Banca Comerciala Romana (the bank lent 37 million euros out of the total 45 million euro investment).
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