Ergun, who had a significant role in the development of Bucuresti Mall, Plaza Romania and Baneasa Shopping City, has recently ended his second term at the helm of Anchor Grup.
In his new position he will participate in a project that, through its size and building mix, has the potential to become for Brasov what businessman Gabriel Popoviciu developed in northern Bucharest, the Baneasa complex. The Turkish executive was in charge of the retail area of the Baneasa project, the largest in the country.
The complex in Brasov “has a comparable potential to the development in Baneasa in terms of size, position and project, but has to be carefully planned from the beginning in order not to burn your fingers on the way,” Ali Ergun Ergen said.
Immochan got the construction permit for the shopping complex to be developed on the former site of the tractor plant Tractorul in Brasov, early this year. The center will have a 45,000 square meter lettable area at first and may be extended, as Immochan owns almost 100 hectares of the former Tractorul site. Work should begin this summer and be completed in the second half of 2014.
The developer also plans to add several office buildings and several thousand homes, which are also items included in the Baneasa project.
Ergun Ergen will contribute his view of the retailers’ demands, and will consult on the component layout so as to turn the project into a dominant one, development, construction and rental, approaching the major retailers and building the management team of the future shopping center, he said. Ali Ergun Ergen holds a construction engineering degree.
The executive left Anchor Grup at the end of March, even though last fall he announced EUR50 million investment plans in the redevelopment of the two malls of the company, Bucuresti Mall and Plaza Romania, which have been in business for 14 and eight years.
Ali Ergun Ergen said he returned to Anchor in early 2012 with a mission to devise a new plan for the two malls, which he did, so it falls upon the shareholders to provide funding and implement it. However, early this year, investors sought him and offered him a chance to make his dream come true, that is work as a consultant and have his own business, Ergun Ergen said.
He is now in the process of establishing his own company and kept in touch with two of his former coworkers at Anchor and is negotiating involvement in other retail projects in Romania and abroad.
Renovation and expansion projects will be the most important on the local retail market in the next five years, as investors will not build that many malls, Ali Ergun Ergen says. The projects, which have already been operational for five years, should ideally undergo a refresh, as many shopping centers in Romania need some modifications, although some owners do not realize how much the market has changed lately yet, he added.
Each mall in Bucharest, for instance, is suffering because of the Lipscani area (Old Town), which has been getting a lot of traffic in the last couple of years and such areas either exist or can be developed in each major city in the country. Each mall has to come up with something new, different, because the concept of a building including a hypermarket, movie theater, stores and food court is no longer enough, Ali Ergun Ergen said.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)