The opening takes place about a year and a half after Austria’s Immofinanz paid EUR1 for 85% of the developer, controlled at the time by Hungary’s TriGranit.
“TriGranit no longer had the money to continue investment in the project and we bought the stake for EUR1. The overall investment slightly exceeded EUR100 million, including amounts allocated by Auchan, which bought its own space,” Eduard Zehetner, CEO of the Immofinanz group now told ZF. This transaction was one of the Austrian group’s best deals on the Romanian market.
Immofinanz has four shopping centers in Romania, with Maritimo being its fifth. One of them is Cluj-based Polus Center, which was bought from TriGranit for EUR210 million.
The Constanta-based mall was also supposed to be called Polus and, according to the original deal, Immofinanz was supposed to buy the project when completed for around EUR180 million. However, the crisis completely changed plans, with the Austrian group ending up owning the entire mall for half the original money.
“We worked with the same architects, but we modified the size, and made larger stores because we knew we had big chances of renting them out to international retailers looking for larger areas,” explains the head of Immofinanz, who has managed to bring into the mall most foreign fashion brands on the market – Inditex, H&M, C&A, Peek & Cloppenburg, New Yorker, Takko and New Look.
The mall is 99% rented out, with 90% of the stores set to be operational on Friday.
Tenants are set to pay around EUR12-15 per square meter in rent in the first year of operation, with the Immofinanz CEO estimating he will raise at least EUR6 million in rent, considering that the mall’s leasable area is of around 35,000 square meters, excluding the Auchan store, which is held by the French company.
The yield of around 6% in euros in the first year seems low, considering the investments made before the boom period, but is higher than that obtained by most shopping centers completed in the last two or three years.
The head of Immofinanz says he does not have his next investments in Romania scheduled and that they depend on the resumption of the economic growth cycle. The first project that could be started next year include the construction of three blocks of apartments in Bucharest’s Titan district, within the Edenia, Armonia and Optima projects in the Adama portfolio, a company that Immofinanz bought this year for EUR42 million.
“If there is no economic growth, there is nothing. We have millions of square meters of land, we are organized and are ready to start new projects, but economic growth is very important for any investment. We are a listed group, so we have access to capital markets, we have around EUR400-500 million in liquidity and banks are happy to lend to us, so if the project is viable, getting financing is not an issue,” Zehetner also said.
(English version by Daniela Stoican)