After having bought Bere Malt Oradea from the State Ownership Fund two years ago, businessman Alexander Mudura came to the conclusion he was unable to cope with competition in this field.
The factory was registering losses, retooling would have cost him 30bn lei and he was not sure he would recover his investment. Therefore, he settled for taking the factory apart and building a shopping mall and leisure complex on the location, which would cost him about 4,000 bn lei, as he says.
The owner of the former brewery says the investment will be run in two stages and will be funded by Plazza Invest, a joint-stock company he set up for this purpose. He stated he had brought Romanian and foreign investors on board, investors that had the necessary capital to carry out the project.
"Since we don't have the entire amount of money we need, we discussed a bank loan to be recovered in time," Mudura says.
The programme will begin by the building of a shopping mall to include a multiplex cinema with six halls, restaurants, cafeterias, game arcades, a bowling alley, as well as a beauty parlour, a postal office, ATMs and a drugstore.
"The construction alone will cost about 20 million dollars, and the complex will take up 4,500 sqm. The problem was finding a company to provide quality products for affordable prices.
We have made quite a progress in talks with companies from Austria and Great Britain and we are planning to dedicate the shopping mall on September 1, 2002," Mudura says.
Along with the construction of the mall, the second project of the businessman will be also developed: the sports and leisure centre. "Our services will match the international standards.
We will build a four-star hotel with 140 rooms. We already have three hotel chains looking into our investment. We will also have a multi-purpose room with an Olympic pool and indoor skating ring where we could organise concerts," the Romanian businessman also said.
A few days ago, Plazza Invest signed the contract with a construction company. The detailed urban development plan for the centre has already been approved by the Town Council, therefore construction works may begin the moment the piece of land is cleared of the remains of the brewery.
Aged 62, Alexander Mudura is one of the few Romanian businessmen that had the courage to start life anew at 43. He fled Romania in 1982, carrying only six shirts in a suitcase and settled in Germany.
One year later, he had already signed up for the courses of an economic faculty and was working as a porter at the railway station to support himself. He started his own company, Mudalex, in 1987 and became a businessman.
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