Raiffeisen kicks off EUR 150m Bucharest mall project

Austrian developer Raiffeisen Evolution is pressing ahead with the construction of the Promenada shopping centre in Bucharest after having finalised the sale of an adjacent office project, SkyTower, in December last year.

'We have just started construction of this new shopping centre which is expected to involve an investment of some EUR 150 mln,' managing directors Gerald Beck and Markus Neurauter told PropertyEU in an interview during the Mipim trade fair in Cannes on Tuesday. The scheme, which is aiming for a DGNB Gold certificate, is due for completion in October 2013.

The mall, providing 55,000 m² of gross lettable area, adds to an ambitious development pipeline carried out by Raiffeisen in Central and Eastern Europe and Russia. At present, the company is working on 33 projects with an estimated investment cost of EUR 1.2 bn, financed out of a combination of equity and debt. 'We are pushing forward with development in places where virtually no one is currently building and where we anticipate a fall in vacancy rates and increasing demand for new offices and retail facilities,' they said. 'We are also looking for new acquisitions especially in our core markets of Poland, Rumania, Hungary and Austria.'

In Bucharest, all of the company's office projects are currently fully let, they added.

Earlier this week, the company started the development on a new office scheme in Vienna, Second Central Office am Park, while in Moscow construction is already under way on a 22,650 m² office complex, Leninskiy Prospekt. In Szczecin, Northern Poland, the company expects to break ground in the coming months on a new 30,000 m² shopping centre representing an investment of some EUR 50 mln.