Retail space deliveries will accelerate towards 200,000 square meters in 2018, as new projects and extensions are scheduled in ten medium-size towns and cities across Romania, but no significant delivery is scheduled in capital Bucharest this year, according to reports released by Cushman & Wakefield Echinox.

S Immo has completed the upgrade of the Sun Plaza shopping centre in Bucharest and reopened all reconfigured areas to the public. The €30 million remodelling has added 11,000 sqm of new retail space to the shopping centre.

By the end of 2017, total retail stock in the Warsaw agglomeration amounted to 1.76 million sqm, of which shopping centres accounted for 1.2 million sqm. Other formats include retail parks (276,000 sqm), standalone retail objects (212,000 sqm) and outlet centres (57,000 sqm). Approximately 85,000 sqm of space was delivered to the Warsaw retail market last year with the largest completed object being Galeria Północna (64,000 sqm). Furthermore, the saturation level in the shopping centre format totalled 472 sqm / 1,000 inhabitants and was the third lowest rate among the eight major metropolitan areas nationwide. JLL summarised 2017 on the retail market in the Warsaw agglomeration.

Multi Corporation, a pan-European fully integrated retail real estate service platform, recently acquired the asset and property management of Allee Centre. This shopping centre is located in the city-centre of Budapest and includes 46,700 sqm of retail space. Multi’s centre management team took over the management of Allee Centre on 1 January 2018, marking Multi’s first entry into the Hungarian retail real estate market. This is the fourteenth country in which Multi Corporation is developing its operations.

Czech online retailer alza.cz plans to bring its new self-service concept store to Hungary, local daily Magyar Nemzet reports. Alza opened its first similar store at Prague’s Flora metro station this January. The store, which is able to serve 1,000 costumes daily, operates with no staff and offers 24-hour accessibility. The company invested nearly €200 million in the opening of the store.

In 2017, approximately 360,000 sqm of new retail space was delivered to the Polish market, which is 15% less than in 2016. Most new shopping centres were completed in the eight largest agglomerations (over 66% of completions). Thus, at the end of 2017, the total stock of modern shopping centre space in Poland reached approximately 11.5 million sqm, according to Colliers International.

Owner Unibail-Rodamco plans to extend the Aupark shopping centre in Bratislava by 7,000 sqm. According to etrendk.sk, the developer has already filed documentation for a construction permit.

Developer activity remains strong despite high retail space saturation in many Polish cities. Magdalena Sadal, Head of Retail Research & Advisory at Cresa Poland, talks about retail space saturation and the purchasing potential in Poland’s largest agglomerations.

In the next two years Delta Holding plans to invest €600 million in real estate projects in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Bulgaria.

The Iulius Company has commenced the works for the retail component included in the Openville Timişoara project, the largest mixed-use development in the west of Romania. The first phase of the project integrating the current Iulius Mall Timişoara is set for completion in Q4 2018 and will include 47,000 sqm of additional retail premises, 100,000 sqm of Class A offices, a park, a traffic underpass, as well as more than 1,500 new parking places.