SOFIA (Bulgaria), December 15 (SeeNews) – Warsaw-based real estate developer Global Trade Centre (GTC) plans to invest 300 million euro ($437 million) in four shopping centres in Bulgaria, the company said on Tuesday.
Its subsidiary GTC Bulgaria is developing three shopping centres of its Galleria brand - in Stara Zagora, 230 km southeast of Sofia, and in the port cities of Varna and Burgas, on the Black Sea coast. GTC considers a fourth shopping centre, to be located in Ruse, on the Danube river.
“With those four projects Bulgaria is a big challenge for me and my company. In nine months we expect the opening of the first shopping centre in the country, in Stara Zagora. Irrespectively of the difficult conditions on the market, construction is on its way and we have already contracted well known retailers,” GTC Bulgaria CEO Shalom Mor told a news conference.
GTC partners for the financing of the three projects are Bulgaria's MKB Unionbank, the local units of Italy's UniCredit and Hungarian banking group OTP, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
The Galleria Stara Zagora shopping centre is scheduled to open at the end of August 2010, Galleria Varna will come on stream in the second quarter of 2011 and in the fourth quarter of the same year Galeria Burgas should welcome its first customers.
Due to the stagnation on the market, the project in Ruse is still in a planning phase and no date for the start of construction works there has been scheduled yet, Mor said.
“The leasing period for the commercial areas in the shopping centres is between 5 and 10 years and the rent varies from 10 to 40 euro per sq. m.”, the company’s leasing director Ivana Bozicevic told the same news conference.
GTC was established in 1994 in Warsaw. It operates in Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Romania, Serbia, Croatia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Russia and Ukraine.
With the outlets in Stara Zagora, Varna and Burgas the company has 18 shopping centre projects in its porfolio, both completed and in construction. The company also develops office and residential buildings and has overall 135 projects, including 30 under development.
The company is listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange and is part of the blue –chip WIG20 index there.
GTC is 40%-owned by Dutch-based Kardan Group which is active in real estate, financial services and water infrastructure in emerging markets. The rest of GTC’s shares are held by Polish pension funds.
($ = 0.6868 euro)