Owners of Tractorul site ask banks for 100m euros

The first stage of development of the Coresi project on the 120 hectare site of the former Tractorul plant in Brasov will include a shopping complex with a 90,000 square metre lettable area, for which the owners of the project, the Centerra Capital Partners company, are in talks with several banks to raise some 100 million euros.

“The retail area will entail a total investment of 140 million euros, including the cost of the land. The main scenario we are considering in terms of financing is getting an about 100 million-euro loan, while we will come up with 30 million euros. At the moment, we cannot talk about banking financing for real estate projects, but we hope to be able to get the loan until the construction work starts, probably from a syndicate of several banks,” stated Victor Vadaneaux, one of Centerra’s managers. The company secured all the necessary permits to have the variation of the area planning approved and conducted talks with 60% of the potential tenants of the project whose total lettable area will stand at 90,000 square metres, one of the biggest shopping centres on the local market. The retail park area should be completed in 2011 (55,000 square metres with hypermarket, furniture retailers, DIY, sporting goods etc.) and the mall should open several months afterwards. “We signed a number of letters of intent with retailers, but many of them are using the financial crisis as an excuse. We know what our main anchors will be, but not even these retailers have signed leases so far. We are cautious, too, because we don’t want to find out we have tenants who change their minds later or cannot afford the investment when we start arranging the space,” stated Shay Mor, development manager of the company, recently recruited from Israeli Neocity group, where he acted as vice-president.