Belgian Liebrecht & wooD plans new outlet mall

Johan Rogiers, one of the three founding members of Belgium-based Liebrecht & wooD, which brought onto the local market the concept of a retail park with an outlet store as an anchor, says the firm is negotiating the acquisition of a plot in North Bucharest, for a second project.
Liebrecht & wooD is currently developing the West Park real estate project, which will be one of the largest of its kind delivered in Bucharest this year, with investments worth 120 million euros. The project, located near the Bucharest-Pitesti highway, will comprise an outlet centre, called Fashion House, a Kika furniture and interior decorations store, a Hornbach store, which will retail gardening equipment and construction materials, as well as a Technomarket store, a retailer of electronics and home appliances.
Rogiers spends three days a week in Bucharest, but monitors construction works via a webcam, and receives photos of the construction site’s development each week.
“I don’t know if the West of the Capital (which also houses the West Park project) can accommodate two outlet malls,” says Rogiers, who is unconcerned at the prospect of having close competition on the Bucharest-Pitesti motorway, where Romania’s first retail park with an outlet mall is being developed. “We are on schedule with construction works, and have already signed in-principle agreements with retailers for over 70% of the space. Hornbach will open the store a few months earlier than expected, and the rest of the project will be delivered in November this year.
Liebrecht & wooD owns three retail parks with Fashion House malls in Poland – in Warsaw, Gdansk, and Sosnowiec, but could also expand onto the local market, with Bucharest as a possible target.
“We are negotiating the acquisition of a plot in the North of the capital for a second project, which can house more than an outlet,” says Rogiers, who two or three times a year visits other cities in the country in search of new investment opportunities.
In addition, in an area 13 kilometres from Bucharest, where the West Park project will be delivered, Mega Company has announced the development of another outlet centre, called Mega Designer Outlets.
Outlet malls house stores that are directly operated by the manufacturers, where the prices of products are lower, without the mark-ups applied by intermediaries.
The Mega Designer Outlets project will be developed in two stages. The first stage will include over 16,000 square metres of retail space and will be delivered by the end of this year. The overall project will take up an over 17-hectare area, and house a lettable space of 38,600 square metres, with the value of the investment being put at 80 million euros.