“The number of shopping centers is not the problem, their size is,” Vizel says.
Each district needs its own shopping center with a specific tenant mix. If too big, the size might hurt the efficiency of the project itself, he added.
Bucharest has ten malls of more than 40,000 square meters each (if including Unirea Shopping Center, remodeled and upgraded after the nineties). Four of the malls, Baneasa Shopping City, AFI Palace Cotroceni, Sun Plaza and Mega Mall are even larger than the average, with a lettable area of 70,000 to 80,000 square meters. Two new malls are due to open in Bucharest next year, ParkLake Plaza (Titan, east of the city) and Veranda Mall, near Piata Obor.
AFI Palace Cotroceni has a lettable area of 82,000 square meters. AFI Europe has recently completed expansion of the shopping center by 1,000 square meters at the Galaxy entrance, which allowed the Reserved store to expand and Starbucks to reopen its coffee shop. The company is also preparing a 1,000 square meter extension of the entertainment area, and will add a further 7,000 square meters for the fashion stores and the parking lot.
The decision to go ahead with the expansion, which will also increase the parking space available, came after talks with several major fashion brands looking to rent space in AFI Palace Cotroceni. The expansion will begin towards the end of the year and be completed in the second half of 2016. The investment in the two expansion projects should take AFI Cotroceni’s lettable area to 90,000 square meters and amounts to about EUR14 million to EUR15 million.
The food court in AFI Cotroceni will be remodeled, too, by the end of the year, to accommodate even more people. The changes will be gradual, to make it more attractive and make people feel like they are eating outside not inside a shopping center, Vizel says. The two entrances of this mall, Far (lighthouse) and Galaxy will go through a renovation process as of the end of the summer scheduled for completion by early December.
AFI Palace Cotroceni is now 100% rented by 350 tenants.
“AFI Cotroceni has become a ‘city within a city’ targeting not only people in Bucharest but people from other cities and tourists.”
AFI Europe is also preparing to start a new project on the former site of the Laromet plant in Bucurestii Noi (NW Bucharest), where it owns 16 hectares of land. The development will include 6,000 to 7,000 square meters of retail space and several buildings with about 2,500 apartments together. Vizel did not say how much the investment was worth, only that AFI should receive the construction permits in the next two months.
AFI Europe should also begin construction of a new 42,000 to 45,000 square meter shopping center in Brasov next year, a EUR60 million to EUR70 million investment. The mall should be completed in late 2017.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)