The extension of Iris Shopping Center in Titan, of the Plaza in Drumul Taberei and Militari Shopping Center, new projects in Oradea – ERA Shopping Park and in Bucharest – Grand Arena in Berceni, are the most important inaugurations of the first few months of the year, despite the fact that all signals point to a half-frozen real estate market.
Developers that got financing from banks and managed to attract a significant number of tenants carry on with the projects they started in 2007 and 2008, especially in Bucharest, where retailers say that traffic and sales are less affected than in other cities of the country, which turned out to be overestimated.
"There are malls that stand no chance for survival in smaller cities or in which several retail centres were built. I don’t see Bucharest in danger, I see the rest of the country in danger because provincial cities do not have the (necessary) critical mass," stated Octavian Radu, owner of RTC, who has bought 13 international apparel, footwear and accessories brands through his Rafar fashion division over the last few years.
Radu has already signed contracts with Anchor Grup to have three brands present in the extension of the Plaza Romania centre that has been recently launched. He will open the first Kipling monobrand store (accessories and bags), the second Sacoor Brothers and the second Catwalk multibrand store, all of which target above-average income consumers.
"Those that have stores in Plaza Romania and Bucuresti Mall will not have any problem, because these are the oldest malls and have a constant and very high traffic. We will end up seeing people from Ploiesti and Pitesti coming to do shopping in Bucharest as they used to in the old days," says RTC’s boss, who also has a Debenhams store in Plaza Romania.
The new projects entail approximately 250 million euros in investments and will host 250 new stores, of such retailers as Carrefour, which will open two new stores in ERA Shopping Park in Oradea and in Grand Arena, Media Galaxy, Flanco, Domo, C&A, Hervis, Decathlon and Otter.
"We will open another Otter store and the first Steve Madden in Plaza Romania, even though we halted development for this year. Anyway, Bucharest is very important, much of our business is done here," says Ioana Stan, marketing manager of Otter Distribution.
The first two openings this year were Anchor Grup’s, which completed the extension of the Plaza Romania at the beginning of February and German fund DEGI’s, which completed the last part of the gallery of the Iris Shopping Center in Titan, where a ten-screen Starplex cinema was opened, as well.
The next openings scheduled for the coming period are the first phase of the ERA Shopping Park in Oradea – March 11, the Grand Arena shopping centre in Berceni – March 25 and the extension of the Militari Shopping Center project – April 2.
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