With a new manager and a fiercer competition, City Mall, the first commercial center in Southern Bucharest, eyes major positioning overhaul, which consists in modifying brands mixture and developing office spaces.
City Mall has four floors and covers 19,000 sqm, surface for rent, whereas only three floors are operational. As for the fourth floor, the mall’s representatives are conducting market researches and consider turning the surface into office spaces.
“We have a project for fitting the office spaces, but it depends on the outcomes of the latter researches. We try to combine these two types of investments, because in the end, they go hand in hand: office area generates traffic on food court, which provides other services to those in the office area,” Mihai Agaficioaia stated for Wall-Street.
According to him, fitting office spaces together near to retail area may be a profitable investment, as there are areas in a mall that can not be leased as retail spaces, namely the fourth floor, where the rent is not comparable to that of a retail store.
“If this project will be effective, within one year at the most, will be completed, and the surface of the mall will mount to 3,000-5,000 sqm office spaces,” Agaficioaia added, stressing that the rent will line up to rents of office spaces in general, and not to retail spaces”
All three operational floors of the mall are approximately fully leased, the surfaces ranging between 40 and 1,500 sqm, but the new manager considers changing the actual brands mixture, positioning the mall in middle class segment.
“We will two more brands that are not yet in the Romanian market, and we will upgrade the actual tenants’ mixture. We will be positioned only in middle class segment, and this is why we must clearly understand what people look for in a mall, and what brands they prefer,” Mihai Agaficioai
