Biggest real estate project outside Bucharest, tailored to the crisis

Businessman Iulian Dascalu, the owner of Iulius Mall shopping centre network, says he had to rethink the Palas project that he is developing in Iasi amid the collapse of the market of apartments, which made up a significant part of the 260m-euro project.

"With the crisis, as the project was at the beginning, we scaled back the housing segment from 800 to 100 apartments, taking into account this is the hardest hit segment of the real estate market, not only in our country, but across the entire world. Of the 100 apartments to be built, we sold around 60 and we're focusing on retail, office and services," Dascalu stated.

Dascalu is developing the biggest retail project outside Bucharest, Palas Iasi, set to also include a mall, several office buildings, the first of which was delivered a week ago, two hotels and a five-hectare park, all of which located behind Culture Palace in the centre of Iasi.

He has recently signed the contract for the rental of an over 5,000 square metre space in the Palas project with Auchan French hypermarket network and says he will have signed contracts for around 60% of the retail area by the end of this year.