Unibail-Rodamco, Europe's largest listed real estate company, has slipped one place to second spot in PropertyEU's latest retail developers ranking based on projects completed between 2014 and 2016.
The Paris-listed shopping centre specialist ceded its place to Hamburg-based ECE which won the top spot with completed projects totalling 399,900 m2 over the three-year period under review. Unibail-Rodamco was a close second, however, with 389,385 m2, just 10,000 m2 less than the winner.
In fact, Unibail-Rodamco's total volume of completed projects for the three-year period is actually higher than its score in 2016 when it won the number one position based on projects completed between 2013 and 2015. It was the first time ever that a listed retail real estate company topped the ranking since our annual survey was launched in 2007.
The company's continued prominence in this year's ranking is partially explained by its massive Mall of Scandinavia in Stockholm. Completed in 2015, the mall has a total GLA of around 100,000 m2. Unibail-Rodamco’s name appears three times in our ranking of top 10 completed projects during the period under review and all three projects are located in Western Europe.
Largest completed scheme in Europe
In addition to Mall of Scandinavia - which remains the biggest completed scheme in both Western and Eastern Europe in the past three years - Polygone Riviera in Cagnes-sur-Mer features in 7th place with a total GLA of just over 73,000 m2. A redevelopment elsewhere in France, in Lille, scraped into 10th spot in this overview.
Unibail-Rodamco is active in the CEE region, but none of the projects that it completed between 2014-16 are located in any of the CEE countries. That said, it is working on a number of new schemes and extensions in Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
In Wroclaw, it is currently putting the finishing touches to a 65,000 m2 scheme which is due to open its doors later this year and it is also working on its new 55,000 m2 Bubny shopping centre in Prague. The new mall is due to open its doors in 2021, but elsewhere in the Czech capital it is working on an extension of an existing scheme – Centrum Chodov – which is set to be completed in the course of this year.
The bulk of Unibail-Rodamco's retail portfolio is located in the more mature countries of Western Europe and it continues to make waves in this region, despite the fact that the market for dominant shopping centres is virtually saturated.
The biggest is a new scheme in the Uberseequartier in Hamburg (pictured), followed by Val Toloso in Toulouse, the Mall of the Netherlands in Leidschendam and the Mall of Europe in Brussels.
