All grocers great and small

The retail discussion panel was moderated by Tomasz Wysocki, the head of retail parks at Smart Park Poland, and he was joined on stage by Justyna Kur, the vice-president and head of property and rental at Apsys Polska, Brady Welch, the co-founding partner of Slate Asset Management, Jacek Kołodziejski, the country director for Poland of Stage Capital, Or Ackerman, the group CEO of G City Europe, and Anna Bartosiewicz-Wnuk, the CEE head of Singu. According to Justyna Kur, the density of retail space in Poland now stands at 380 sqm per 1,000 inhabitants and many medium-sized shopping centres need to be repositioned to survive. She believes that new shopping centres could be developed, but such projects will now have to be very selective. However, a large proportion of shopping centre assets are now around 25 years old and in need of modernisation and refurbishment. Such centres will have to fulfil different needs to what they were designed for. Many tenants now require larger sales area