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.

Czech online retailer alza.cz has opened a new self-service concept store at Prague’s Flora metro station. The retailer has branded the new concept ‘the store of the future’. The store, which is able to serve 1,000 costumers daily, operates with no staff and offers 24-hour accessibility.

In 2017 20 new foreign retail brands entered Poland and over 330,000 sqm of shopping centre space were delivered to market. The retail transaction volume exceeded €1.9 billion. JLL highlighted the results on the retail market in Poland for 2017.

The Polish retail market witnessed a large number of interesting developments throughout 2017. Magdalena Sadal, Head of Retail Research and Advisory at Cresa Poland presented an outlook for 2018.

Carrefour opened a new hypermarket in Warsaw. Its customers will be able to take advantage of its digital solutions, as well as range of new commercial concepts, including m-commerce type services, a restaurant right in the heart of the store and a line of checkouts that is not quite what they'll be expecting.

In 2017, Green Caffe Nero, TK Maxx, Dla Spania, KappAhl, Newbie, Home&Deco, Good Label, T-Mobile and Forever 21 opened twelve new stores across Poland totalling more than 9,800 sqm of floorspace. Each project was delivered by the Retail Agency team of Cushman & Wakefield.

NEPI Rockcastle inaugurated Shopping City Ramnicu Valcea, following an investment of €40 million. With a leasable area of 27,900 sqm, Shopping City Ramnicu Valcea offers 14,000 sqm of fashion brands, a hypermarket and services area of 10,000 sqm and 3,000 sqm of restaurants and entertainment area.

GTC’s Polish flagship retail project was officially granted an investment loan facility in the maximum amount of up to €200 million. Under the original agreement, Bank Pekao S.A. granted a construction loan facility of up to €116 million.