Scintei, 40, migrated to Israel, where he studied at the Haifa University and worked in the hotel industry for Africa Israel group, the owner of AFI Palace Cotroceni mall of Bucharest. He returned to Romania in early 2009 to take over the reins of City Park developed by Israeli-owned group Neocity and sold last year for EUR81 million to NEPI.
The South-African group kept Scintei at the helm of the Constanta shopping center, which has a rentable area of almost 30,000 square meters, and now assigned him a more important task, considering the Bucharest project will have a rentable area of around 72,000 square meters.
“For the time being, I am involved in both projects, but from Monday to Thursday I am in Bucharest, on Mega Mall site,” Sorin Scintei told ZF.
Tiberiu Smaranda, executive director at NEPI, said one of managers part of the existent team will most likely be promoted to run the mall of Constanta.
NEPI, which develops Mega Mall jointly with Austrian group Real4You, hopes to attract between 50,000 and 60,000 visitors daily to the Pantelimon project and annual sales are projected at EUR200 million, a level comparable with that of AFI Palace Cotroceni and Baneasa Shopping City.
(English version by Catalina Apostoiu)