Echo Investment has obtained a building permit for the construction of Galeria Libero, which is to be built on Kościuszki Street in the southern part of Katowice. The investor also concluded a contract with the city authorities concerning the road layout around the facility.

Prologis has signed a new lease agreement for 4,800 square metres with Inter Cars Hungária, the largest passenger and truck parts dealer in Central and Eastern Europe, at its DC7 building now under construction at Prologis Park Budapest-Sziget. CBRE facilitated the transaction.

Prologis has announced that it will deliver a 34,200 square metre build-to-suit distribution facility at Prologis Park Prague-Rudná for Sportisimo, a Czech sporting goods retailer.

Last year has proven to be a turning point for the Romanian investment market. An increased number and more diverse group of investors started looking at individual assets and portfolios, resulting in the largest number of transactions since the beginning of the crisis. Will this upward trend continue into 2016 and 2017? We report from SEE Property Forum 2016, a conference co-organised by Portfolio Conferences and RICS, where the biggest players of the Romanian investment market came together to talk about the future. 

Goodman Group has signed two lease agreements for a total of 7,800 sqm at the Pomeranian Logistics Centre (PLC), located adjacent to the Deepwater Container Terminal (DCT) in Gdańsk. With these new agreements, all available space (51,500 sqm) at PLC is now fully leased. In response to market demand, Goodman is also constructing 15,836 sqm of class-A warehousing at PLC, which will be delivered in the third quarter of 2016. 

A new distribution centre for Tesco is being built at SEGRO Logistics Park Poznań. The company will start operations in the BTS building comprising over 30 000 sqm at the turn of September and October 2016. Deliveries to 140 retail outlets in the northern and north-western regions of Poland will be completed from the new central warehouse.

The total modern office stock in Warsaw reached 4.75 million sqm at the end of Q1 2016. As much as ca. 75% of this space is located in the central Core and Fringe zones, as well as Upper South and South West. Cushman & Wakefield has published the sixth edition of their Skyline Tracker report, outlining developers’ activity in the Warsaw office market.

International real estate developer HB Reavis has announced the acquisition of the BEM Palace in Budapest from Europa Property Fund. Located in the heart of Buda, BEM Palace is the company’s third development site purchased in the Hungarian market and their first redevelopment project across all markets. 

Major cities of Southeastern Europe have had to face many challenges: wars, earthquakes and the drastic redevelopments of the socialist era. Today, they are trying to rebuild themselves and become modern, European capitals. We look at three countries, three capitals – and three very different plans for city developments. 

RICS organised its first annual conference in Bratislava, Slovakia on 5 May. The half-day event focused on the role of international standards in emerging markets and on the Slovakian property market itself.