After an office building and a logistics park, the Austrian real estate investment fund Europolis is preparing its first commercial project, worth up to 100 million euros. Europolis is in advanced talks with a local developer, with the project set to be located in the Capital, sources on the market say.
"We are in talks over a number of projects, and one of them regards a shopping centre," Bernhard Mayer, Europolis'' chairman of the board, told Ziarul Financiar. He would not provide details about the project in Bucharest, but verified it could indeed amount to 100 million euros.
If this turns out to be true, then the project would exceed the value of the two malls developed thus far by Turkish Anchor Grup, Bucuresti Mall and Plaza Romania.
The list of major commercial centres in Bucharest also includes Unirea Shopping Center, held by businessman Dan Adamescu.
Another shopping complex is being built in northern Bucharest at the moment. This is a GTC International project, a real estate company held by Israeli Kardan Group that has also developed the Europe House and America House office buildings.
There is also a large shopping complex in the works in the west of the capital city, on a plot of land that belongs to US-based investment fund NCH, while EMCT, a company that has developed some of the shopping galleries inside the Carrefour complexes has announced it is working on Sun Plaza in southern Bucharest.
The strategy of investment fund Europolis targets entry on a specific market as soon as possible. The Austrians have already applied this strategy successfully in Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary and are to apply it on the Romanian market, as well.
Europolis is one of the first real estate investors to have arrived on the domestic market. The Austrians came in 2003, when they bought the GTC-developed office building Europe House for approximately 31 million dollars (over 26 million euros). One year later they made their second investment on the domestic market, following involvement in the 75 million-euro Cefin Logistic Park project.
The lack of real estate projects on the domestic market led the Austrian fund to resort to a forward purchase contract for its second acquisition. This guarantees the fund will buy the development when the construction works are finished and a certain preset rental level is reached.
The Europolis-Cefin deal first entailed the acquisition by the Austrian fund of the company that develops the Cefin Logistic Park project that was in its first stage of development. The investments for the next development stages will be made by Cefin with funds provided by Europolis, which provides for a safe exit for Cefin.
The two projects, Europe House and Cefin Logistic Park will entail a cumulated investment of over 100 million euros at the time the last phase of the logistics project is completed.
Despite being among the first to arrive on this market, Europolis is not the largest investor in the Romanian real estate sector. The most active investor thus far is Immofinanz, Austria''s largest real estate fund, that has bought four projects on the domestic market over the last two years for which it paid in excess of 130 million euros. ionut.bonoiu@zf.ro ; adrian.mirsanu@zf.ro
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