Austrian developer Supernova has laid the foundation stone for a €70 million project aimed at the expansion of the Supernova Ljubljana Rudnik shopping centre in Ljubljana. Upon the completion of the project, Supernova Ljubljana Rudnik will become the biggest shopping centre in Slovenia.

Fashion House Group has appointed retail veteran Cornelia Nicolae to the position of Retail Operations Director in Bucharest. In the newly created role, Cornelia will be responsible for launching the Group’s new flagship development, its second in Bucharest, while continuing to drive footfall and sales at its established outlet centre in the capital.

Czech real estate developer RC Europe has opened its third retail park in Romania, following an investment of €9 million. The retail park, operating under the Nest brand, is located in Oradea, occupying approximately 6.500 sqm GLA. Construction works on the project started in October 2019.

Polish company Scallier is developing a new chain of retail parks in small and medium-sized Romanian cities under the Funshop Park brand. By 2022, 6 facilities with a total leasable area of ​​40,000 sqm will be completed. Work is currently underway to prepare further investments. Scallier, based in Poznań, has been operating on the Polish market for nearly a decade and specializes in investment management in the sector of small and medium-sized commercial facilities.

Trei Real Estate GmbH has opened its 18th retail park under the Vendo Park brand in Poland. The retail property is located in Solec Kujawski in the Kuyavian-Pomeranian voivodship. The town of around 16,000 residents is located a two-hour drive south of Gdansk. The new Vendo Park provides a lettable area of around 3,000 square metres and 97 parking spots. The property is almost fully occupied. Its tenants include KiK, Sinsay, Martes Sport, RTV Euro AGD and Hebe, among others. Overall, Trei invested c. €3.8 million here.

Developer Prime Kapital and investment partner MAS Real Estate have opened 33,000 sqm GLA Dâmboviţa Mall shopping centre in the city Târgoviște, 80 km northwest of Bucharest.

The first half of the “pandemic year” was most difficult for retail players, considering the lockdown during the emergency state, but the recovery up until July has been better than most market participants were initially expecting, according to Colliers International’s market report for the first semester of 2020. In the industrial & logistics area, it has been business as usual during the pandemic, with some seeing big spikes in activity, but a significant pipeline of speculative developments and a competitive market are tilting the balance in favour or tenants.

Ever since shopping centres in Poland were reopened in May, the share of online sales in total retail sales has been falling steadily - it stood at 7.7% in June compared with 9.1% a month earlier and 5-6% before the pandemic. Cushman & Wakefield has summarised Q2 2020 on the Polish retail market.

A company from Chariot platform, managed by Griffin Real Estate, a private equity investor operating in the real estate sector, signed an agreement with Auchan Poland to extend the lease of its six retail properties totalling 83,000 sqm. The lease agreement was signed for a period of over 12 years. The transaction is certainly one of the largest retail leases that has been closed in Poland.

The modern retail stock in Romania, consisting of shopping centres, retail parks and commercial galleries with a leasable area of ​​at least 5,000 square meters, has reached 3.96 million square meters and will exceed the 4 million sqm threshold until the end of the year, according to Cushman & Wakefield Echinox.