Westhill, a British provider of consulting and real estate development services, is set to invest 100m euros in the development of two retail projects, a mall and a retail park, in two Romanian cities.
Each project will take up an area of 8-10 hectares and will be finalised in 2010, according to Andrei Panculescu, a commercial and acquisitions manager with Westhill's Romanian office. The company's representatives chose not to reveal the locations of the future projects.
"At present, we are the owners of two plots of land in two cities in which we are going to invest around 40-50m euros per each project. For the shopping centre, we are still in the phase where we are waiting to receive construction permits, and we'll start the project early next year," stated Andrei Panculescu. He held the position of general manager of real estate consultant and broker Eurisko until last year and before that worked with MobiFon (the current Vodafone), Ogilvy & Mather, Xerox and Roel. Westhill will develop a mall of around 50,000 square metres to include extensive leisure areas, in a city in the centre of the country.
The company changed its strategy a year after arriving on the domestic market, having been previously interested in entering the office market. At present, shopping centres and housing projects are the main target of the company. "We are interested in developing shopping centres and retail parks in cities with 150,000-250,000 inhabitants and to the extent to which we find good locations, we will also develop housing projects with blocks of flats of around 3-4 storeys," states Panculescu.
According to him, the Romanian retail market is not competitive at present because there are not enough brands on the market and prices are higher than in Austria and Hungary. At the moment there is enough retail space, a rising number of retailers will arrive
