“Shopping centers choose to add office space to their offer because the buildings in highest demand are those with that have services around them. Malls and their parking lots boost attractiveness of everything around them. A mixed project is more attractive than a mere office project,” says Ilinca Paun, managing director of Colliers International.
More than 10,000 square meters of the Plaza Romania mall of Anchor group will be converted into office space, which is due for inauguration this spring. Plaza Romania Offices will operate in a repurposed wing of the mall with direct access to the retail area. The first tenant announced is retailer Mega Image, which will move 400 employees to Plaza Offices.
With a lettable area of 38.200 square meters, besides Plaza Romania Offices’ 10,500 square meters, the total lettable area of the complex is 48,700 square meters.
NEPI plans to construct an office building integrated with Promenada Mall and expand the retail space thereof, a project that should be completed in 2018. The integrated office building will have up to 30,000 square meters of lettable area depending on the permits to be received, NEPI’s financial report published on the Bucharest Stock Exchange website says.
NEPI bought the 40,300 square meter Promenada Mall in Floreasca-Barbu Vacarescu area in Bucharest, where it also owns two office buildings. The mall opened in 2013 and is located in an area that has seen significant class A and infrastructure development in recent years.
AFI follows the same trend, so the entire AFI Park complex built by Israel’s Danya Cebus consists of five class A office buildings, with a lettable area of more than 70,000 square meters, near the AFI Palace Cotroceni mall, whose lettable area stands at 82,000 square meters. The first three office buildings are already rented, mostly to IT companies, and the remaining two are scheduled for delivery this year and are already 50% pre-let.
S Immo’s Sun Plaza, too, chose a mix of retail and office space. Back in 2008, the group announced the mall would include 10,000 square meters of office space on top of the shopping center and an underground passage connecting it to the Piata Sudului subway station. The Sun Offices building has a lettable area of 9,000 square meters.
While AFI and Sun Plaza were designed with an office and retail space mix in mind from the beginning, in Plaza’s case, the owner chose to repurpose some of the space, Ilinca Paun says. Promenada’s investor will build an office building next to it, expanding the retail area and connecting the two.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)