Vienna-listed Meinl European Land has won a public tender to buy a 90,000 m[sup]2[/sup] plot of land in Istanbul for EUR 100 mln. Meinl is planning to develop a EUR 200 mln shopping centre with a lettable area of around 50,000 m[sup]2[/sup] on the site. The shopping centre will be anchored by a hypermarket and construction should start in a year once all permits have been received.
Vienna-listed Meinl European Land has won a public tender to buy a 90,000 m2 plot of land in Istanbul for EUR 100 mln. Meinl is planning to develop a EUR 200 mln shopping centre with a lettable area of around 50,000 m2 on the site. The shopping centre will be anchored by a hypermarket and construction should start in a year once all permits have been received.
Meinl is developing this project with the Acteeum Group. The two companies entered in a EUR 1 bn join venture last year to develop shopping centres in Turkey, Ukraine and Romania. Led by managing directors Henrik Stig Moeller and Arne Bongenaar, Acteeum is a privately-owned group focusing on the development of retail real-estate in Eastern Europe.
Meinl is developing four shopping malls under this venture in Turkey, one scheduled for completion by the beginning of 2008, and the other three in 2009. The total investments of all five completed projects in Turkey will be circa EUR 650 mln, researchers at merchant bank Kempen & Co said. Meinl is mainly active in three countries: Russia (42% of its operations), Poland (22%) and Turkey (12%).
