Exclusive    David Hay, AFI Europe Romania: The first office building to be ready in August

2012-04-18 17:00:01

     With a registered trafic of 51,000 visitors in Q1 of this year, the 300 rented spaces of the mall stated sales increase of 24 percent in the first two months of this year. As David Hay, CEO of AFI Europe Romania told the Diplomat-Bucharest, as he just returned to the working site of the first out of five office buildings to be erased within AFI Business Park Cotroceni, “it was strange for a month with such a harsh weather as February to register a large traffic”. Actually, according to the CEO, since the launch of the mall, the retailers’s sales increased y-o-y, with an approximate EUR 105 million worth sales registered in 2010 and EUR 182 million worth sales registered last year. For this year, the estimations also look good, as the CEO states, but he keeps prudently the assumptions regarding the mall’s revenues for this year, “due to the local and regional lack of economic preditibility”. In the last two years, the mall’s revenues from rental activities were estimated at around EUR 23.8 million.
The reasons for keeping an evolving performance within a downsized consumption environment is explained by David Hay through several main measures whch have been taken so far: “At first, we improved the tenant mix, by closing contracts with non performing tenants and we focus on the synergy between the mall and the office buildings”.  Hence, the mall’s management (which is always selected inhouse) decided to replace up to 30 percent of the tenants, by cancelling contracts and reshaping the retail mix of the mall. Besides the already announced new entries in the fashion retailer mix of the mall, David Hay says that the he is expecting some new brand entries to fill the remaining retail space, representing around 3 percent of the total GLA. Regarding the office building to be completed by August this year, the spaces have been already 50 percent pre-leased with demands coming mostly from IT companies, “due to the location of the mall, near Politehnica”. The total investment in the new building is estimated at EUR 20 million, with EUR 13.4 million secured from a loan inked with Unicredit Bank”.
Also, according to Hay, some of the tenants demanded the possibility to expand the rented spaces, so that, the Israeli company hurries with the workings to the second office building. Within the priority projects for this year, Hay stated that it will start the construction of the two shopping malls planned at Ploiesti and Bucurestii Noi, in capital.  AFI Ploiesti, delivering 25,000 sqm is already 70 percent pre-leased according to Hay, having as anchor, Cora hypermarket. The opening of the mall is scheduled for the end of 2013. In the same time, the workings at the 30,000 sqm shopping center in Bucurestii Noi will have Real supermarket as anchor , with the first building stage scheduled for May and the opening of the first stage, for Q1 of 2013. In Arad, AFI Europe is discussing with a DIY for the 30,000 sqm retail park that is planed to start either this year or in 2012.