Change needed for most malls to become attractive to customers

Dark alleyways, packed-out spaces with dead corners and a few
stray visitors. This is the landscape in most Romanian shopping
centres, which need a fundamental transformation to become truly
attractive for city inhabitants, reads Business Construct
magazine.
“Some Romanian businesspeople thought they were good at
everything. In the case of malls, they did not really succeed,”
says a real estate consultant.
Romanian businesspeople are still the biggest owners of
shopping centres domestically, most of them having businesses in
other fields of activity.
“These investors would have to restructure at some point. The
development of a shopping centre is a highly sophisticated process.
(…) In recent years, demand for retail space has been very high,
but only the good ones will survive,” considers Arpad Torok,
development manager with TriGranit Hungarian company.
Still, it was not only Romanian businesspeople that made a
mistake in developing certain shopping centres. “We all erred when
we overvalued inhabitants’ purchasing power,” stated RED Management
Capital representatives at the moment they announced their decision
to close Armonia Center project of Braila for a certain
period.
Such situations will probably be not repeated in the following
years. Developers, and banks and retailers in particular, will be
more careful in researching the market before starting an
investment.
The falling consumer spending was most acutely felt in small
cities, where retailers have already started closing stores to
boost operating efficiency.
However, several Romanian businesspeople have gained a lot
from shopping centre development. Dan Adamescu also put up for sale
Unirea Shopping Center in Brasov in March, but no significant deal
has been signed on the shopping centre market for more than a year
now.
After tapping Bucharest and large cities, developers were
already planning investments in cities of 50,000-100,000
inhabitants in the construction of shopping centres. The crisis has
put most of these plans on hold, though.